Stephanotis
by Bons Baisers
Summary: Fate has a funny way of tying people together, and when Paul disappears, Ban discovers that he and the cafe owner have an old enemy in common. A sex-slave trader, known for his taste in little girls, has left an indelible print on their lives...
1. Prologue

Aster's mine, but as much as I'd like to claim Ban, he and Ginji and anyone you recognize belong to another.

**PROLOGUE**

"What?" An outraged Ban glowered at the Honky Tonk's door, or rather, at the 'Closed' sign that hung just inside it. "Closed until further notice? What the hell?"

Ginji and his partner had responded to a frantic call from Natsumi to meet at the Honky Tonk, only to find the red and yellow sign hanging lopsidedly in the glass. Natsumi and Rena stood by, antsy and upset, as the two Get Backers peered into the darkened windows.

"Rena-chan and I got a call from the coffee shop down the street this morning. They said that Master was going away, but that he'd made a deal with them for us to work there until he got back. He didn't tell us anything," Natsumi fretted. "Why would Paul-san just disappear?

"And without calling to make us pay our tab." Ginji smiled abashedly, hoping to put the girls at ease. It was unusual, yes, but he wasn't especially worried. Paul could take care of himself. "Did you call his apartment?"

"We called his apartment, his cell, the Honky Tonk phone, and we e-mailed him." Rena ticked off the number of ways they had tried to reach their boss on the fingers of her left hand.

Natsumi's dark head bobbed up and down anxiously in agreement. "I'm worried, Ban-san." She bit her lip with small white teeth, and where the pressure met the pink mouth, the color fled, leaving the flesh pale and bloodless. Ginji had a sudden image of his own white teeth biting the pink mouth, and looked away with a blush.

"Don't be." Ban tapped a cigarette out of his carton of Marlboros, oblivious to Ginji's discomfiture, and fingered the white paper briefly before lighting up. "He was obviously prepared for something like this, or he wouldn't have made plans for you two to work at the coffee shop."

"But why wouldn't he tell us about it?"

Ban shrugged and leaned against the side of the building. "Could be dangerous," he offered around the cigarette gripped in his teeth.

"Ban-chan," Ginji chided him, as Rena crossed her arms tightly with worry. Ban had a lot of good qualities, he thought ruefully, but tact did not number among them.

"If he wanted us to know where he was, he'd have told us," Ban insisted logically, stubbornly. "So don't worry about him. If he said he'd be back, he'll be back. He's nothing if not dependable."

"But – "

"Quit fussing over it," Ban said with finality, looking up at the plumes of smoke that drifted away from the red embers of his cigarette.

"We could at least take a look around his apartment, just to make them feel better, couldn't we?" Rena and Natsumi were obviously upset, at it wasn't as if they had anything better to do.

Ban snorted, and the rising smoke puffed out weirdly around the exhaled breath. "You want to break and enter into Paul's apartment? I can tell you what you're going to find – a few pornos, a half-drunk case of beer in the fridge, a dozen messages on his machine – all from Natsumi and Rena – and a big computer system blinking halfway around the spare bedroom. Just like any bachelor pad. Except probably compulsively tidy." His mouth twisted peevishly, and the cigarette almost dropped from his lips. "There. Now you know, so we don't have to go, right?"

"Please, Ban-san?" Natsumi clasped her hands tightly together, and rested her chin on the knuckes, lips aquiver. Rena didn't say anything, but flashed her dark, earnest eyes at the Get Backer, a silent addendum to Natusumi's plea.

To Ginji's secret satisfaction, Ban proved no better at turning down pretty girls than he was, and so it wasn't long before all four piled into the 360 and headed out to the outskirts of Shinjuku where Paul lived, with the agreement that the girls would treat the Get Backers to dinner.

It wasn't a new complex, but had the comfortable feeling of a nice, older neighborhood, with red bricks and recently painted beige siding around the upper floor. A series of small, man-made lakes were nestled into the ring of apartment buildings, each neatly landscaped with a small gazebo in the center. Ginji had never been there before, and to the best of his knowledge, Ban and the girls hadn't either.

"This is nice," Rena noted, a slight smile softening her usual somber countenance.

"Just like Master," Natsumi agreed.

Now that the Get Backers had agreed to take a look, both girls had relaxed considerably. Ginji grinned at Ban, who rolled his eyes. It was nice to be appreciated.

"You remember the apartment number, Natsumi?" Ban asked, surreally calm as he careened into the parking lot.

"1218," she answered, clinging to the armrest. Rena hadn't budged, taking Ban's unorthodox driving habits in stride, but now she pointed.

"There's building twelve. And eighteen probably means second floor, right?"

Ginji had to think about that for a moment, but Ban cut off his chain of thought by throwing on the breaks. They were halfway between spaces.

"Um, Ban-chan – shouldn't you park in just _one_ space?" he ventured. It wasn't as though he didn't know his suggestion would be rebuffed; it was just that he wanted to be able to say 'I told you so' later. Usually that was Ban's line, so he enjoyed the rare occasions when he could throw the words back in his contentious partner's teeth.

"We won't be here long," Ban answered confidently.

Ginji sighed. "Looks like we'll be hitting you up for ticket money, too, Natsumi-chan," he said.

She laughed, and Ginji blushed again. "Okay, but you owe me."

Ban bristled with aggravation, but, true to form, he didn't back out to park again. The two Get Backers got out and pulled their seats forward so that Rena and Natsumi could get out.

Strolling off toward building twelve, Ban turned back to them, a haughty mien wrenching his mouth. "Come on. We don't have all day to do this, you know."

"What else are you going to be doing, Ban-san?" Rena laughed, leaning on the 360. "Your hangout's closed, and if you had a job, you wouldn't be here."

Ginji snickered a little at that. It didn't bother him, but their current, assignment-less state had Ban irritable and on edge.

"It'll come," Ban insisted with a growl. "No thanks to punk kids like you."

In their neat little work uniforms, Rena and Natsumi were the furthest thing from punk kids that there could be, and the accusation inspired a fit of giggles.

Ban threw his hands up in disgust as they approached the building, muttering to himself, until they came to Paul's door, and found that there was already someone standing there.

"Oh, good," the delivery girl said with relief. She wasn't very old, maybe a year or two younger than Ban and Ginji, and she was quite pretty, with a pert, bobbed haircut and grey eyes. "I was hoping someone might know what I should do with these." Behind her on the landing was a big flower arrangement of pale pink peonies, white roses, and tiny white star-shaped flowers.

"Are these for this apartment?" Ban asked, dark brows lowered in confusion.

Her face fell. "Damn – excuse me!" Her cheeks flushed as the invective slipped out. "It's just that nobody at work really knows this guy's story, and I was hoping you might." Sitting down by the flowers, she said, "He seems like a really nice man, but he doesn't say much, you know? He won't even tell us who the flowers are for, like a girlfriend or a wife or anything. Just smiles. Gives us a last name to put on the package, but only because he has to."

Ginji cut off the question Ban was trying to ask and sat beside her. "Does he order flowers often?"

"Only every Monday for the past five years." The girl grinned. "Awesome, isn't it? I wish someone would send me flowers every week."

Ginji didn't notice when Ban blinked in astonishment and tried to speak again, but this time, Rena cut him off. "You're kidding."

"No, I'm serious! Every week, he orders another arrangement. We've shipped them all over the world, too, Sydney, Vienna, Madrid, Los Angeles, you name it." She rested her chin on her knees pensively. "Every once in a while, he'll ask for them to be brought here, just for a few weeks or months at a time, but mostly they get shipped out. We all fight over who gets to deliver them when he wants them brought here, but so far nobody's seen the lucky lady." She sighed. "It's such a mystery. So romantic."

Ginji glanced at the now glowering Ban as he opened his mouth a third time, but like Natsumi and Rena, he was far more interested in the girl and her flowers.

"Are they always like this? These roses are _gorgeous_ – and these, what are these? They're beautiful!" Natsumi gushed.

"Peonies – one of my all-time favorites!" The girl smiled happily, tapping one of the pink blooms lightly with a perfectly manicured nail. "And no, he never orders the same thing twice. All different colors, all different shapes, rare flowers, common flowers. Except these." She fingered the tiny white blossoms daintily. "Everything he asks for has stephanotis in it. In the language of flowers, it means happiness in marriage."

"Marriage?" Ginji stared at the girl in disbelief, and Natsumi and Rena shared a wide-eyed look. The moment was broken by a string of curse words from Ban.

"Shit, you guys made me forget what I wanted to ask!" Ban complained, but they ignored him.

The delivery girl nodded. "We always figured that there was a wife out there somewhere. But he never gives us a full name, and it isn't the same as his. Always the same person, though. Whoever she is, she gets around."

Ginji felt Ban jump beside him, and figured he'd remembered what he'd wanted to ask. "What's the name?"

"It's a funny foreign name, but I remember it because it's English for a type of flower. It's 'Aster.'"

Then she sighed again. "I guess if you don't know what I should do with these, I don't know either. I'll have to take them back and hold them until he wants them." She gathered the big arrangement in her arms and started to make her way carefully down the stairs.

They watched her leave, and every eye followed the pink-and-white flowers to her van.

"Aster," Ban mused, half to himself.

"Let's go inside, Ban-chan!" Ginji got to his feet and stood by the beige door. It wasn't like Paul to ask to have something delivered, and then not be there to pick it up, and he said as much, adding, "You said it yourself, Ban-chan – he's nothing if not dependable.

Ban nodded, finally intrigued. Pulling his trusty skeleton key from his pocket, he fiddled with Paul's lock, and let himself in.

Rena and Natsumi gasped.

Ban caught Ginji's eyes, and both Get Backers spoke at the same time.

"Shit."


	2. Pink and Green

Still doesn't belong to me, but here's hoping you enjoy my little spin-offs as much as I enjoy spinning them. I don't often beg for reviews, usually I'm content to wish my readers luck with their own fics, but as busy as I am right now, reviews really do encourage me to get a move on. So if you've got the time, if you like the fic, please review.

**PINK AND GREEN**

It had been a good night, he remembered, the last night he'd spent with Emily. She was unpretentious and undemanding, just as she always was. Rum and coke and a good action flick in front of the sofa pleased her as well as a fine Bordeaux and an evening at the symphony; a pink tank and thin grey lounge pants hugged her slim figure as neatly as the emerald satin sheath she favored for nights on the town. And though her dark blonde hair had been pulled back into a simple tail at the nape of her neck and her make-up nearly worn away by the long day, she'd been every bit as vivacious and beautiful at home in the apartment as she had been the night before at the opera hall.

He'd missed her.

She was full of surprises, she was. One night she wanted pizza and would splay herself out on the floor like an child for a board game, but the next she would don sequins and diamonds to assume a position as the unrivaled queen of whatever society function she chose to attend. But upper crust jail bait or girl-next-door, both of her personas were a far cry from the half-starved, battered little girl he and der Kaiser had happened upon that night in Berlin.

They never meant to keep her. After all, how did it look for two bachelors to live with such a young girl? But after they returned her to the orphanage she'd escaped from, neither of the two foster families she was placed with worked out. The first family returned her to the orphanage she'd run away from in the first place, terrified and eager to rid themselves of her. The second proved abusive, and when der Kaiser invented an excuse to visit the kid they'd rescued and found her beaten bloody, neither he nor Paul had been inclined to entrust her to the state a third time. So they'd smuggled her back to Japan with them, in a harrowing adventure involving Turkish prostitutes, giant snow crabs, and a very fine bottle of scotch.

And she stayed with them, finding her niche as their unofficial caretaker and ward, the one who kept up their apartment and made sure the bills got paid and waited up for them with a first aid kit and beer readily accessible. By the tender age of eleven, she probably knew more about running a home efficiently than he or his partner had. And they were grateful to her for it, for dealing with all the nasty little necessities that make the life of a bachelor so much less appealing than it ought to be – the laundry, the grocery shopping, the dirty dishes. When der Kaiser met _her_, Emily had remained with Paul, and had continued to do most of the same things she'd done all along.

Except, with der Kaiser out of the apartment, Paul began to see things he hadn't seen before.

Like how moist and how soft her lips appeared, slack with sleep, when he came home to find her slumbering on the couch waiting for him. And how her childhood scrawniness had faded into the softer curves of adolescence. And how her piping voice had settled into a warm, deep contralto.

It was bearable, because der Kaiser still treated her like a little girl, and that made it easier for Paul to deny that she was quickly becoming a woman – a beautiful, talented, kind-hearted and vibrant woman. A desirable woman. The kind you could fall in love with and never get over.

It got worse when der Kaiser disappeared into Moujenjou's upper labyrinths. She was only fifteen when the Get Backers' name was passed down to other, less jaded individuals, and the next three years were hell on Paul's nerves.

He considered himself a good man – a moral man – and there remained in him a love for the little waif from the streets. And _that_ part of him hated the _other_ part, the part that was imprudently but undeniably falling in love with the teenager he was supposed to be protecting. The part that got a little breathless when she walked by, noticing that her childhood gait had become a woman's saunter. The part that swallowed hard when she threw her arms around him, when the new, grown-up curves of her body pressed against him in all the right places. The part that found her tears heart wrenching and prized her silvery laughter and wanted nothing on earth so much as to see her smile. The part that had the effrontery to suggest that maybe he wasn't alone in his out-of-place affections.

She couldn't have really wanted what she seemed to want, and Paul knew it, and so he kept his eyes well-hidden behind his glasses and his heart conscientiously off his sleeve. But no matter how he tried, it seemed as if the girl he'd practically raised flaunted her new woman's body at him at every turn. She shifted just so that her shirts revealed more than they ought. Anything that fell to the floor demanded a long, luxuriant stretching of her body to retrieve. And there was a softness in her eyes and a gentleness in her smile that she reserved for Paul and Paul alone, the one person she ought to have been able to trust not to think of her like _that_.

Still, though her youth stung him uncomfortably, she didn't act like a child or even a teenager; she'd abandoned childhood long before he and der Kaiser had walked into her life, and adolescence had passed as quickly as it arrived, in the ugly underbelly of Shinjuku in which he and his partner had operated. She'd seen and learned about and endured things early on that many people are never unfortunate enough to witness, and that assuaged his guilt just a bit. More importantly, he knew all along that he wanted so much more than the slim young body with its tantalizing new figure. He hadn't wanted anything dishonorable. Just her, every sweet curve, quick smile, and throaty laugh, he wanted it all. Her maturity and his own certainty of the feelings beyond the desire, well, if it didn't make it right, it at least made it understandable.

He was thirty years old before he could admit to himself – and to her – that he'd been in love with her since she was fourteen, with her wry little smiles and her insistence on bandaging up injuries that didn't really need the care, with her big heart and her brilliant imagination. She'd been quick to retort that she hadn't ever wanted anyone but him, and didn't he know it wasn't nice to have flaunted all those pretty, older, _appropriate_ women at her?

The day she turned eighteen, he gave her a pale green convertible, because she loved the feel of the wind in her hair and because the color was just exactly the sea-glass green of her eyes. But he made her promise to wait to drive it until he could ride along. He came back to the apartment after closing down the Honky Tonk, which he'd purchased recently, anticipating her excitement, her innocent exuberance with his generosity.

But when he opened the door, the innocence he'd taken such care to protect was gone. Her eyes burned with an intensity he'd never seen there before, catching his own eyes the moment he stepped inside. About her body, which reclined fully nude with false languor on the sofa, a thousand tiny candles flickered hesitantly in the darkness.

She watched him, watched the horror that spilled out of his soul and into his face, and he almost could have wept at the sudden shame that flushed in her cheeks and exposed bosom, as she mistook his old guilt and self-loathing for rejection. She fled him, pausing only long enough to snatch up the keys and her purse, and an old coat of der Kaiser's, and before he could say a word to forestall her, she was gone.

He searched frantically for her, to no avail. The police could not locate her. The youths he had passed on the Get Backers' name to could not find her. And none of his many, many contacts had any idea where she might have vanished to. It wasn't very long before he gave her up as lost.

But she did come back to him, eventually. She returned, harder and thinner, but her smile was still wry and her imagination still vivid, and when they spoke together, as the truth came out, her eyes became soft and her smile gentle, and whatever had been wrong between them was forgotten in the passionate sweetness of their reunion.

She'd become a Keeper in those years apart, a protector who specialized in the defense of children. It suited her, took full advantage of her talents, it kept her heart young and something of her innocence intact. He was happy for her, even though assignments often lasted months and took her away from Shinjuku and the man who loved her there.

Yet the flames remained undimmed, and she came to him whenever she was able. There had been no one else since that first night together, and though their time together was brief and infrequent, it was filled with all the love of a lifetime of closeness.

Paul relished the nights she was able to come home to him, and they made the most of every moment together, going out or staying in with equal ardency. She remained his solace and his refuge, the quiet place in his life where nothing else entered or mattered. He kept her to himself, never spoke of her, never even mentioned her name, because the secrecy with which they conducted their great love affair was part of the charm of it, part of what made it sacred and precious. And he had guarded that sacrosanct bond jealously for almost five years now.

Two days ago, someone had violated that bond. Which was why he found himself now on the 7:45 train from Frankfurt to Berlin, that ancient city that had brought them together the first time.

Paul's fingers closed around the slim golden band he cherished, but seldom wore. It seemed he was never to be free of the old days. It hadn't been so long ago he'd been in Moujenjou, facing ghosts. And here he was again, chasing demons that should have been laid to rest ages ago.

Rosenthal had special reason to hate Emily and the Get Backers who had harbored her. Paul could only pray that he knew her value as a bargaining chip in getting to Paul, and to what he knew, and that he would be gentle with his captive.

Hot fear mingled with cold rage in Paul's belly as dark memories resurfaced.

* * *

"Ban-chan," Ginji breathed. "What the hell?"

Natsumi was trembling; Rena stood silently in the doorway, appraising the calamity that was Paul's apartment. Every cabinet was flung open, everything that ought to have been in a cabinet lay scattered and broken on the floor. Drawers had been pulled out and dumped onto the dark beige carpet. What had once been surprisingly nice furniture lay overturned and broken, and its navy blue and sage green upholstery had been slashed, its stuffing ripped out. Ginji stood still only a moment before he rushed to investigate the other rooms, probably trying to make sure Paul wasn't lying dead or unconscious somewhere in the ruin.

Ban drew a deep breath, thinking quickly. If Paul had any old enemies that would do this kind of thing, he'd never told Ban about them. The lock hadn't been forced; that suggested a plunderer – or, he thought wryly, a retriever with a lucky key. The chaos indicated a search of some kind. Ban just hoped that they hadn't found what they were looking for.

At least it wasn't a computer file, he realized, slowly making his way through the trashed apartment. The computer system, which, incidentally, did take up half the spare bedroom, was still whole, although the CDs that had been in a crate beneath the desk had been systematically broken. Whatever they'd been looking for, it was some object, or a hard copy of a document. Not a single CD had escaped intact – maybe that's what they were looking for. Maybe they weren't taking chances?

As Ginji and Rena tried to calm the panicked Natsumi, Ban considered their next step. Whatever he did, he surmised, the apartment would have to be searched. He had no idea as yet what Paul's attackers had been looking for, and Paul hadn't left any word saying where he would be going. But maybe there were plane ticket confirmation stubs, or an answering machine message confirming hotel reservations, or something of that nature.

Or maybe he'd get really lucky and come across whatever the intruders had been looking for to begin with.

Ban frowned, and pulled a cigarette from his carton. Something was off about the apartment, and he couldn't quite put his finger on it.

"Ban-san, you shouldn't smoke in Master's apartment," a tearful Natsumi said, outrage stifling her hysterics. He ignored her and headed back into Paul's bedroom. He had walked through it briefly already as if surveying the damage; in truth, like Ginji, he'd wanted to make sure Paul wasn't around.

Something was definitely not right. Figuring it would come to him sooner or later, he crouched in the bedroom, gleaning what he could about the man who slept there.

The bedroom suite was fashioned of dark maple wood and extremely well-made. The walls were a pale, sea-glass green, as were the linens on the bed, again, obviously expensive. The duvet cover and the neatly tied drapes that hung over the windows were dark brown. The artwork on the walls were original, abstract paintings full of sensuous curves and undulating lines, and were framed by simple maple frames that matched the bedroom furniture. The room was not quite the disaster the kitchen and living room were, although the drawers of the armoire, dresser, and nightstands had been removed and dumped out. The closet had been rifled through as well, and its contents proved more interesting.

Aside from the white shirts and khaki pants of Paul's work clothes, there were a few nice suits, a very nice tuxedo, some dress shirts, some slacks – the usual middle-aged guy's closet. But those were Paul's clothes, and Paul's clothes actually made up a very small percentage of what was in the closet.

Whoever she was, Paul's mysterious lady-friend had a thing for pink and green and all shades of both. A few more subdued black and white articles appeared, but for the most part, the blouses, skirts, and dresses he found were anything from baby pink to fuchsia, peridot to hunter green. Evidently she also had a thing for matching bags and shoes.

Other than these clothes in the closet – none of which had been worn recently, as Ban could see by the fine layer of dust that coated them – nothing in the apartment indicated a female presence. He dug a little deeper into the tumbled mess of the closet, then stopped.

"Really?" He laughed quietly and adjusted his shades, finally recognizing what had been bugging him about the apartment. If it hadn't been for the distraction of the mess, he'd have noticed it immediately. "Typical, old man." He stood up, walked back into the kitchen, judging the distance of the kitchen wall that lined the back of Paul's closet. Yeah, that had to be it.

"Ginji," he called, and turned back to the bedroom. Rena took over comforting Natsumi, and Ginji followed him.

"Look at this – the back of the closet isn't the same length as the kitchen wall on the otherside."

"Could be the water-heater," Ginji offered dubiously.

"Nuh-uh, that's at the back of the linen closet." He'd seen that with a quick look into the bathroom.

Ginji shrugged, but shook his head unhappily, blonde spikes shivering with the movement. "I really don't want to mess up the apartment any worse than it is."

"Can't get much worse." Ban felt along the too-short side of the closet, rolling his eyes when his fingers encountered no cobwebs or dust, and tapped the wall. "Hollow," he said with satisfaction, and felt along the edges for some kind of catch or release that would permit the false wall to be removed. "Got it."

The side of the closet came off cleanly, revealing a steel safe.

"Bingo." Ban turned to flash a grin at his partner, but a strange look had come over Ginji's face.

"Ban-chan," he began uncertainly. Suddenly, his eyes snapped open wide. "Oh, shit!" He jerked Ban to his feet, wrenching Ban's left arm painfully, and snatched up the safe, bulky and unwieldy as it was. Then he dragged both into the living room, and to the accompaniment of a startled string of oaths from his partner, hurled the safe out the window and onto the lawn below.

"Ginji-san!" Rena protested, as Natsumi's eyes went wide with fear. Ban started to demand an explanation, but suddenly his arms were full of Rena, whom Ginji had grabbed and flung at him. And then he was falling out the window, trying to protect Rena's head, unceremoniously shoved through the broken glass by his supposed best friend.

Within seconds, Ginji had launched himself and Natsumi out the window after the safe and his partner.

"What the – " Ban sputtered, but stopped when his mouth filled with dirt as Ginji pressed his face into the ground. He didn't get a chance to ask more, because at that moment everything became clear, and his words wouldn't have been heard over the explosion anyway.

"Fuck!" After several moments of deafening silence, Ban sat up, surrounded by debris. After a quick look about him to make sure everyone else was alright, he cursed again. "Fuck!"

"Sorry, Ban-chan," Ginji said sheepishly. "It took me awhile to figure out what was so weird about that apartment. I knew there was an off current somewhere, but I didn't realize what it was until you triggered it in the closet.

"A bomb," Rena wondered. "Did Paul-san install that? Why?" She brushed bits of broken glass from her shoulder, and then she turned to do the same for a terrified Natsumi.

"Probably to make sure no one got into this." Ban hauled the heavy safe upright.

"Is everyone okay?" Ginji was up on his feet, fussing worriedly over everyone. Ban waved him off, careful to avoid showing him the nasty cut along his side that he'd gotten when Ginji had thrown him into the jagged glass of the window.

"I have a key to the Honky Tonk. Let's go there and see what Paul-san's gotten himself into. At least it would be more private than this front lawn." Rena got to her feet, looking about her anxiously.

"The police will be here any minute," Natsumi agreed, her voice shaking a little. A bit of color returned to her face as Ginji took her small hand in his to help her to her feet. "We should get out of here."

Taking the girls' advice, Ban and Ginji carried the safe to the 360, under the cover of Natsumi's sweater. The explosion naturally drew a crowd, but they'd managed to get far enough away before anyone showed up that no one connected them to it, dirty and battered though they must have appeared. They got to the Ladybug without incident, and drove back to the Honky Tonk in silence.

"You two should go home." As he pulled up by the café, Ban tried to keep his voice stern without sounding bossy. The situation was becoming far too hot for the café waitresses, and if he came off autocratic or domineering, or too cavalier, they wouldn't take him seriously.

Rena gave him a dirty look, but the explosion had rattled Natsumi, and she didn't argue when Ginji offered to walk her home.

"Please just let me know when you find Master," she asked quietly, before stepping out of the 360. Ban watched, a small smile at the corner of his mouth as Natsumi's small form pressed closely against Ginji's larger one as they walked away. It widened when her hand reached hesitantly for Ginji's, and his partner took it.

Ban looked away. He didn't have to see them to know they were both blushing.

Rena unlocked the door, and he carried the safe in, trying not to wince at the strain that pulled at the slashed flesh on his right side.

"Take your shirt off," she said, when he had put the safe down. She pursed her lips and raised a brow at him, daring him to disobey.

"You wish, sweetheart," he retorted. She shrugged, flipping hair over her shoulder.

"You can let me deal with those cuts now, or I'll tell Ginji about it when he gets back, and you can answer to him for it. I know he'll be just thrilled to know that he managed to get you all cut to pieces saving your life." Crossing her arms and leaning against the bar, she tapped her fingers thoughtfully against her forearms. "He might even cry," she mused heartlessly.

"You little bitch." Ban swore. "You wouldn't do that to him."

She tossed her head defiantly. "He would rather know than not – I'm not being very kind to keep him in the dark as it is. But since you won't argue if he's the one trying to fix you up, you're not leaving me much of a choice. Even you can't turn him down when he gets to feeling guilty. Why put him through that? He's your friend, after all, isn't he, Ban-san?" She leaned back against the wall, eyes hard.

Damn her. He glared at her, knowing he was beaten. "Try me, Ban-san. Just you try me," she taunted. And she smiled in triumph and Ban peeled off his shirt and tank with gritted teeth and a string of very nasty words.


	3. Blue Eyes Blue

Don't own, don't sue.

**BLUE EYES BLUE**

In the basement of a Richschlyder Industries warehouse, Emily Aster watched her charge with deep bemusement. Until her mother's death, the girl had been a bubbly, excitable child, willful, intelligent, and altogether engaging. Lia Sorenson's murder two weeks ago had instantly dulled the sparkling, effervescent brilliance that made her daughter such a joy to protect. Now Hitomi lay absolutely unmoving on the gritty concrete floor, eyes open but unseeing, dulled by sadness and despair no four-year-old should ever endure.

Lia Sorenson had been abducted as a young girl, intended for sale on the white slave market. Unfortunately for her, she had been such a beautiful child that Rosenthal had kept her for himself, and for eight years she had been brutalized for his personal amusement. Her eventual rescue at fifteen landed her in Tokyo, in a peculiar establishment governed by an even more peculiar woman. In fact, Emily had been vaguely acquainted with the House of Lilies even before Lia hired her to keep her daughter, because of its connections to both Rosenthal and her old friend der Kaiser's son.

It was unfortunate that Lia had been killed, unfortunate that Emily had been unable to protect her. But the woman, only two years Emily's junior, had been quite specific in her instructions: if both she and her daughter were threatened, Emily's duty was to Hitomi and Hitomi alone, especially if Lia's presence could further endanger her child.

In this ugly, silent place, Emily permitted herself to mourn the dead woman. The loss of such a life, its beginnings and its end so very tragic, scorched her soul. Rosenthal and his many sins bound her to the dead woman by ties of experience that no words could ever have duplicated. A quiet oath echoed in the recesses of her mind, a promise devoting Emily to the one beautiful consequence of Lia's short life: a child already tarnished with grief because of Rosenthal's evil.

Emily's green eyes studied Hitomi's motionless form intently. No waking child should ever be so still, thought her Keeper, all at once bemused and incensed. She would have reached out to hold any other child, but Hitomi's grief clung about her like thorns on a rose, putting off any who would touch her. When Emily came too close to the pain, by touch or by word, she shied away from the well-meaning, but uncomprehending and thus unwelcome compassion, and the blankness in her eyes became a warning to stay away.

It was an expression Emily knew all too well. Hitomi's beautiful eyes, for which she had been named, were intimately familiar to Emily, and seeing that threat expressed in their deep blue depths flooded her mind with old memories that would have been better left undisturbed.

Paul had been hurt – badly hurt, she remembered. Blood had welled and oozed and dripped with alarming regularity, not tapering off, not letting up, but continuing to well and ooze and drip, despite her repeated attempts to staunch the flow. In the shadows, der Kaiser's eyes had been hooded in the darkness; it wasn't until she called him out, infuriated that he'd allowed such a thing to come to pass, that she'd seen the devastation in his eyes. He'd failed, he'd allowed his precious, precious friend to be injured, hadn't been able to protect him, had barely managed to escape alive with him. He'd frightened himself and the girl he'd tacitly promised to protect, he'd failed the two people he really gave a damn about, and he hated himself for it. She would have gone to him, after Paul's injuries were bound, but something in his eyes had alternately warned and begged her to stay away.

He hadn't trusted her with that pain then; probably he had felt that she was too young, too frail for the burden. He shared it with Paul instead, when Paul had roused himself. She could still hear the quiet murmurs of that conversation, could remember Paul's voice, composed, firm, a calming influence on his mercurial partner. The friendship was intact, the incident a minor mistake, and it was never mentioned again.

Paul said der Kaiser's son had found such a friend, and she was pleased to hear it, but Amano Ginji wasn't the first individual who had been able to exercise such a calming will over Midou Ban. Before her murder almost four years ago, that person had run a curious kind of pleasure house in Tokyo. She had once rescued a badly traumatized fifteen year old girl from Rosenthal; two years later she rescued a fourteen year old boy from himself. It was this connection that had first interested Emily Aster in Lia Sorenson's child. After some hesitation, Emily had eventually agreed to keep Hitomi for the simple reason that, as she had explained to Paul in one of their many online conversations, Hitomi Sorenson had her grandfather's eyes.

* * *

Rena had wanted to open the safe immediately after patching up Ban's injuries – which, bizarrely, both of them seemed to think Ginji hadn't noticed. But Ban, with uncharacteristic good will, had insisted on waiting for Ginji.

Ginji smiled a little to himself, amused with his own foolishness, earning a suspicious frown from his partner. Good will nothing, he chuckled inwardly, as he realized what Ban's real motivations must have been. Ban-chan had just wanted to make sure there wasn't another bomb rigged into the safe. Well, that was alright too. At least it meant he appreciated Ginji's abilities, and that wasn't something Ban admitted very often. Usually he insulted his powers with taunts like 'electric eel' or some other equally inane nickname.

Nothing felt off about the safe, however, and after a few minutes, Ban used Snake Bite on the electronic lock, crushing its insides, cursing at the minor shock that served to reprimand him for his presumptuousness.

"Let's see what Paul thought was so damned valuable," Ban said, rubbing his hands together gleefully. Probably he thought there was cash, or something equally materialistic inside. Ginji wasn't so certain; Paul was like one of the jigsaw puzzles he compared their cases to, and he was pretty sure that there were a lot of pieces still missing.

"Huh?" Ban picked up a CD labeled 'Spring, '04' and turned it over, frowning with disgust. The whole safe was full of electronic storage devices – CDs, flash drives, memory cards, external hard drives. "I hope this is some damned valuable information," he grumbled.

"Here." Rena disappeared behind the counter, to reappear with a laptop. "You wouldn't believe how many computers he has lying around this place."

"Thanks, Rena-chan!" Ginji flashed a happy grin at her. She shrugged in acknowledgement and set the laptop down on the table in front of them. Ban caught her eyes, and she frowned.

"I know, I know. I'm going. Just…" she hesitated. "Just be careful, both of you. I've got a really bad feeling about this whole business."

Ban waved her off, insensitively blasé.

"We'll be alright, Rena-chan," Ginji assured her, after glaring at his cold-hearted partner. "Don't worry about us."

Still she looked rather anxious as she left the Honky Tonk, and threw a last, lingering glance in their direction before heading home.

"Here we go," Ban said, almost to himself, connecting the four externals into the four USB ports on Paul's laptop.

The first and third were obviously records for the Honky Tonk, and weren't especially interesting. The fourth was password protected, and Ban unplugged it with a curse, setting it aside to deal with later. That left the second, and it didn't take Ginji long to realize that every folder on that hard drive was duplicated in the other, smaller memory devices, as they were all labeled with a season and a year.

"Where should we start, Ban-chan?" Ginji wondered aloud, running a finger along the screen and the many files displayed there. The file names dated back six years, making twenty-four files altogether, and when Ban opened the one labeled for the past winter, he groaned when he saw that it had been further divided into months. Each month contained a number of word, image, and video files, and each was labeled by date.

"Anal bastard." Ban double clicked a video file dated December fourteenth, and Ginji leaned in closer to get a better view.

It didn't start playing automatically; evidently the default for Paul's media player was 'pause,' but that was alright. He and Ban were content to study the pretty woman for a few minutes before clicking play.

She had masses and masses of thick, dark blonde hair that fell in soft, curled layers all the way to the small of her back. Big green eyes, obviously western, tilted slightly downward toward the bridge of her sharp, narrow nose. These and the half-smile on her small, bow-shaped mouth, gave her a pixie-like appearance, an impression made all the stronger by the flimsy, baby pink chemise she wore. After drinking their fill of the pretty woman, Ban started the video.

"The flowers are beautiful, Paul, some of the prettiest you've ever sent me." She wrapped her arms around herself, smiling happily, and looked off to her right. Following her gaze, Ginji could see a big arrangement of white roses and evergreens, and the small, star-shaped flowers the delivery girl had pointed out.

"They're so Christmassy – I can't wait to get home and spend the holiday with you. My assignment ends in…" she glanced at her watch, "four days, sixteen hours, forty-two minutes, and thirty-three seconds. Not that I'm counting." She grinned, eyes sparkling mischievously.

"I'm hoping for something naughty this Christmas, but I guess you knew that, or you wouldn't have sent my present early." She tugged the satiny fabric of her gown. "I really don't know why you buy me this kind of stuff, you know; it never stays on for very long when we're together, and when we're apart, what's the point? Unless," she frowned with mock severity, "unless you really get them for your own enjoyment. In which case I feel entirely justified in asking for another present."

Suddenly her eyes went wide. "Oh, damn!" A white, terrycloth robe, embroidered with pink flowers shot across the room, and she hurried into it. Wondering briefly who'd been in the room with her, Ginji watched bemused as she ran to the door, which occupied the far right of the screen. Evidently there had been a knock that he hadn't heard over the video.

A jumble of foreign words tumbled out her mouth to the small child who had appeared at her door. The dark-headed little boy smiled happily, hugged her, presented his cheek for a kiss, and toddled off.

Smiling affectionately at her now-closed door, she chuckled softly to herself.

"He's a sweet one, he is. Makes me wish." She turned back to the camera, but there was a faint trace of sadness in her smile now. "Speaking of kids, Paul, you haven't told me about Ban-kun in awhile. I may not be keeping him anymore, but you know I like to keep tabs on my kids, and that one in particular. So 'fess up, are you still starving my Ban-kun?"

Through this little speech, Ban had stiffened, but didn't stop the video. Ginji gasped – several times – but he didn't say anything either, just watched his partner and waited for Ban to collect his thoughts.

"It's unfortunate he got his father's business sense," she continued, "but as long as he has better taste in women, I'll be happy. That crazy bitch reaches out from the grave to piss me off, I think. You'd think I'd have gotten over that by now, but things still start rattling around me every time I think about it too much."

Tossing her head violently, she flung golden curls side to side in a wide arc that spanned almost the width of the queen-sized bed she sat upon. "No, no, not tonight. Tonight I want to think about something else."

She'd mussed her hair, but she didn't seem to mind, if she noticed at all. "Just a few more days. I can't wait; these people don't know the first thing about coffee. She hugged herself again, looking entirely adorable in her fuzzy white robe. "I miss you, Paul, I always do, but every now and again, I miss your coffee even more."

Pulling her knees up to her breast, she pouted and went on, "I miss drinking it with you in the morning, miss fighting with you over the paper, miss the way I never get the mugs put in the washer, because you've always got something to better occupy my time." A wry smile touched her mouth, and something humorous sparked in her eyes.

"Ban-chan, we should turn this off." Ban ignored him.

"Listen to me, getting all sentimental. The first week and the last are always the worst. Ah, well. I'll be home on the ten o'clock flight on the nineteenth. Is Ban turning nineteen this week? My God, I'm getting old." Slipping her hands behind her head, she kneaded her neck for a moment. A surprising amount of muscle shifted in her forearms as she did so. "This old lady is going to bed now. I'm taking Christopher shopping for gifts in the morning, even though I told his father it was dangerous to let him out of the house until after Randolph's trial." She shook her head. "People can be so stupid, sometimes. I just hope we don't run into any trouble."

She smiled then, a sweet, gentle smile that softened every angular pixie feature into something wonderfully lovely, and Ginji knew immediately she'd never intended that smile to be seen by anyone but the man she'd sent her video to. It was the blissful smile of a woman in love, and he felt ashamed to receive it from someone he didn't even know.

"Turn it off, Ban-chan," Ginji said, voice choked, but Ban's eyes were glued to the screen, taking in every minute detail of the girl, her appearance, her room, her movements, everything.

"Ban-chan."

"I love you, Wan Paul. Say a prayer for me. I've got a feeling I might need it tomorrow." A tiny hand, no bigger than a child's hand, gently brushed the screen with its round fingertips. "Goodnight."

A slim golden band had adorned one of the fingers that touched the screen in farewell. Ginji shivered; it was her left hand, and she wore the ring on her third finger.

Ginji closed the video with a violent click. "We shouldn't have watched that, Ban-chan,"

"Aster," Ban mused, tapping a thoughtful finger on the table, oblivious. "Aster, Aster, what could that mean?"

"Ban-chan!"

Ginji didn't get angry very often, but he felt guilty, and guilt was a feeling he didn't handle especially well. "Ban-chan, I told you we shouldn't have watched that!"

"It's not like she did a strip-tease for him, Ginji," Ban replied, snorting. "You worry too much."

"It was private!"

Now Ban was getting irritable. "Do you want to help Paul or not, Ginji?" Ban demanded. "Cuz if you do, I don't have any better ideas right now. That bomb wiped out any other leads we might have had. What's in these files may be our only shot at finding him."

Ginji stared at him helplessly.

Ban cursed. "I don't like it any more than you do, Ginji – I wish we'd never gotten mixed up in his mess, with his secret wife and twice-damned exploding apartment, but we are involved." He frowned darkly. "At least, I am. I _know_ I've never met that woman. I want to know why she thinks she knows me."

Still upset, Ginji looked away.

Sighing, Ban ran his hands roughly through his spiky hair. "I'll try to skip over the more intimate parts, okay? But that's really the best we can do, if we're going to find out what's happened to Paul."

"Assuming his disappearance has anything to do with 'Aster,'" Ginji pointed out glumly. "Maybe we should start with the latest stuff and work our way backward, instead of trying to find the beginning. That way we won't see more than we have to."

Ban relaxed back into his seat. "Sounds good to me." He found the latest folder, opened it, and clicked on the most recently dated file, a word document.

_Dearest Paul,_

_Since Lia's death, Hitomi has been inconsolable. She's so like him, sometimes, so standoffish, so touch-me-not. She sleeps only when she's too tired to stay awake, eats only when I force her to, and barely speaks at all. I have to get her out of Germany, but I know that bastard's watching every airport, every train station, daring me to make a move. He's pinned me down pretty well in Dusseldorf for the time being, but thankfully hasn't found any of the Keeper safehouses here. If you get the chance, thank Nanao for me – those miniature bombs of hers turned out to be wonderful diversions. I'm going to try to get Hitomi to eat something – please, please try not to worry about me too much, okay? I am a professional, after all. Hitomi and I will be fine, so don't do anything hasty._

_Yours, always,_

_Emily _

Ban pushed his sunglasses back with the middle finger of his right hand and turned a grim, icy blue eyes on his partner. "What do you want to bet Paul did something hasty?"


	4. Memory

Not my world, just my playground. If you like it, please review!

**MEMORY**

"_You're not serious."_

"_It'll work."_

"_We'll never see one another!"_

"_We haven't seen each other in three years. Still, here we are."_

"_Isn't it fine just the way it is?"_

"_I want more."_

"_You have me – isn't that enough?"_

"_Em."_

"_Paul…"_

"_Marry me."_

She did, of course, she always wound up giving in. Usually because he never fought her on the things she really cared about. A beautiful day in mid-June, five years back now, they had said their vows privately on a cliff overlooking New Zealand's lush, emerald landscape. A brief "I so pledge" sent the civil official scurrying away to leave the happy couple alone in the warmth of a brilliant pink sunset.

His heart ached with the memory. She had wound stephanotis blossoms and pink rosebuds into her long tresses, but against the gold and red fire the sun sparked in her hair, the flowers appeared dull and lifeless. If she'd suddenly sprouted wings and surrounded herself in a halo of sunlight, he couldn't have been more captivated by the glorious creature that hovered in the protective circle of his arms, or the pink mouth that traced his jaw line with soft, wet kisses, or the eyes that promised a thousand, thousand pleasures and joys to come.

_Emily…_

Paul reluctantly set the old memory aside and raked his fingers through his curls, grimacing as they snagged in the tangles. He'd searched the city over, hacked into every company he knew of that had ever been associated with Rosenthal, found a few more, hacked those, and still found nothing.

Bleary-eyed and exhausted, he broke off his search long enough to brew a pot of coffee. Emily always dumped cinnamon or pumpkin spice on the top of the grounds, and, though he wasn't a fan of either, he loved the way it smelled perking in the kitchen. Cinnamon and coffee in the morning meant she'd wakened in their bed, that they had spent yet another blissful night together.

Paul's coffee was good. People loved his coffee.

But it didn't smell like Emily.

He reflected on this as he waited for the brew. The plain white coffee cup in his hand reminded him of Ban's mug, and he smiled slightly despite himself. Emily teased him for babying the Get Backers, but he couldn't help it. It was a little embarrassing that the name he and der Kaiser had worked so hard for had attached itself to those two bumblers, and it was in some respects a matter of pride that they should succeed. The money wasn't an issue; between his secret Gathering skills and her Keeping, money was plentiful. He'd feed them round the clock if he could, but Ban would have rejected anything that resembled charity, so he dutifully griped about the tab and refused them service every now and again.

Emily was always so hungry for information about them, always worrying over them. It amused him, that they couldn't see how much she was a part of their lives, how much they owed her. There had been that period of real protection, the careful 'redirecting' of unwelcome interest. Never, never did she involve herself directly with Ban; no, she'd promised der Kaiser. But she had put Akabane Kuroudo out of the country for almost four years while Ban grew up, in a clever little scheme that set the Undead Protector against the thin man in black. It was she who had so painstakingly drawn Ban's fate together with the Voodoo children, she who dropped subtle hints to Kudo Yamato about the strange boy in purple sunglasses. Drawn by her insatiable curiosity into Infinite Castle, her heart had gone out to the cold, empty Emperor, and she had suggested a quiet little café where he could escape its burdens for a few brief hours. It had taken a certain amount of skill to manipulate the Get Backers into their current relationship, but her instincts had been correct, as usual, and, with Paul acting as intermediary, she'd managed to push them into a deep friendship without their ever knowing her name.

Of course, her great gift had always been her knack with children. And they just didn't come any more childish than Midou Ban and Amano Ginji.

With a final, choked sputter, the coffee announced its readiness; he poured it into the white mug, mulling over the strange cords that bound him and his wife to the odd partners. With a wrench, his thoughts fell to the little girl Emily had most recently played Keeper to.

She didn't look like Ban, not really, so he couldn't really explain why he felt the connection between them as strongly as he did. Honestly, given her mother's European features, she more strongly resembled der Kaiser. Only her blue eyes, dark and brilliant, called Ban to mind. Perhaps, he mused now, he saw them both as reflections of his old friend, and that shared impression resonated within his consciousness, binding them together.

Or perhaps it was simply that damnably impenetrable look they both strove to perfect, that forced coolness that was so obvious to him, who had long ago learned to read the master of inscrutability.

An icy chill descended over Paul's mind, and he who so seldom considered such impractical, illogical things as gods felt a sudden, fervent prayer well up in his soul, a prayer that Rosenthal hadn't been tempted to test the child's cool carelessness. The bastard had kept her mother prisoner for years, and he'd had a thing for Emily, when she'd been about Hitomi's age.

An image of der Kaiser blinked into his brain; golden eyes pleaded with him, so subtly that no one else would have recognized the entreaty for what it was. Ban's blue eyes hardened, almost imperceptibly, frightened and furious, curiously superimposed on his father's. And beneath them both, a pair of wide, determined sea green eyes urged him to hurry.

Shaking away the vision, Paul downed the rest of his coffee, scalding his throat, but scarcely registering the pain. Instead, he attacked his computer with new zeal. Rosenthal expected a response from him in forty-eight hours. He'd outwitted the son of a bitch so far; Emily's e-mail had ensured his immediate departure, and Rosenthal couldn't expect him to have already arrived in Germany. Hooded and bespectacled, there was no reason any of Rosenthal's lackey's should had registered his arrival in Berlin, either.

With any luck, he would be able to rescue Hitomi and Emily before he squared things away with Rosenthal.

And if he wasn't, well, Paul had learned the value of a human life long ago. For Emily, for Hitomi, he was willing to sacrifice that which he and der Kaiser had rescued from Rosenthal back then.

* * *

Ban wandered aimlessly through Shinjuku's winding streets with his ghosts. Ginji hadn't even tried to accompany him; he'd simply closed the laptop and gestured to the door, to the welcome relief of anonymity that the world outside the Honky Tonk could provide.

He'd only gotten through the last month of Paul's contacts with Emily, for that was her name, the blonde-headed beauty. Wan Emily, or Emily Aster, but Paul's wife, however you looked at it.

But Emily Wan wasn't the blonde occupying Ban's thoughts as he straggled from shadow to shadow in the twilight.

Lia Sorenson was dead.

But her daughter wasn't.

Her four year old daughter wasn't dead.

Her impossible four year old daughter was with Paul's hitherto unknown wife, hiding from her mother's murderer somewhere in Dusseldorf.

But Lia, pretty, snotty, irritating, irrepressible Lia was dead, shot between the eyes, executioner style.

Just like Midei.

A wave of grief crashed into Ban's soul, sorrow like he hadn't felt since the night Midei was murdered, and he stumbled into the brick wall of the alley he walked. The night he and Lia had sought each other, had comforted each other, the only time they had ever agreed on anything.

He'd always thought it was fitting somehow, for a cursed man, that his first time had emerged from grief and sorrow and misery, and the aching, desperate need to not be alone.

_Yamato._

_Yamato._

_Yamato._

_Yamato._

_Himiko._

_Yamato._

_Yamato._

_Yamato._

_The name sounded out in his mind like a heart beat; like an irregular thump Himiko's name entered the rhythm, a painful jarring of his senses, a vicious reminder that the evil went on, that even sunk into this half-alive state, his suffering did nothing to alleviate hers. _

_If he died, she would still be suffering._

_Yamato._

_Himiko._

_Yamato._

_Yamato._

_Yamato._

_He was vaguely aware that someone had approached. He looked like hell, starved and dirty and dehydrated, barely conscious, but in the feverish tumult of his grief, he couldn't bring himself to care. Maybe this person was the one who would finish him off and end his cursed life._

_Please God._

"_Look at me, innocent."_

_He saw the filmy white of her gown, wondered briefly why it hadn't been stained by the dirt on the street, felt strangely pained when the legs it concealed knelt beside him on the filthy ground._

"_Look at me." _

_He didn't want to look, didn't want the reminder that he was still alive, that others continued in this world when Yamato did not._

_A long white hand touched his face; he flinched away, unwilling to contaminate anyone else with his evil. The hand was gently insistent, and it pulled his face upwards._

_To eyes that had hidden in the darkness so long, the sunlight illuminated that her from behind was like the halo of an angel. Soft black curls floated about a beautifully heart-shaped face, and dark eyes, full of compassion, smiled sweetly down upon him._

_He felt dirty; he pulled his face away and buried it in his hands. _

_The long white hands were connected to soft white arms, and these embraced him. He struggled, humiliated that his filth should touch such a beautiful thing. But the arms were surprisingly strong._

_The left raised him to his feet, supported him when he would have fallen, too weak to stand on his own. The other dropped down behind his knees, and in a moment he had been lifted clear off the ground, cradled to the hollow between a pair of perfect breasts._

_A heady blend of rose and sandalwood enveloped him, comforting him, and he lost himself in the sweet scent and the soft body that carried him, finally giving way to the unconsciousness that had stalked him since he'd wakened from his last nightmare._

_He woke in a white room. A number of individuals had attacked him since Yamato's death, because he hadn't the will to oppose them. He hadn't tended to his injuries; somehow, they felt deserved. He hadn't washed away Yamato's blood either. It was the last connection he had to a living Yamato._

_But all of that was gone now. His injuries were neatly bound in fresh white linen, the blood cleaned away._

_Color caught his vision – green. White lilies on green stems; these were the only color in the white room. White drapes hid the world outside the window. White blankets covered his white clothes. White furniture, simple and elegant, sat upon a white carpet, against white walls._

_Pure, pure and perfect, like the woman in his dream._

_Except she wasn't a dream._

_She was lying beside him, in a long white satin negligee, watching._

_"Would you like to tell me about Yamato?"_

_He bolted, or tried to. Weak, he fell to his knees, feeling sick. All the pain of his injuries assaulted him, as though he'd been immune to it until this moment._

_"It's alright, innocent. You don't have to tell me anything." She slipped off of the bed, light and graceful, almost inhumanly delicate. As she knelt beside his fallen body, he realized for the first time how extremely tall she was. Her willowy frame subdued a phenomenal height; she must have been well over six feet tall, maybe closer to seven. She picked him up, despite his struggles, and replaced him in the bed before gliding away to the closer of the two white doors._

_"You're safe here, innocent. Come and go, as you please. I'll be waiting."_

_Innocent?_

_No, never. Never again. Not him. Not Yamato's murderer._

* * *

_The House of Lilies was the strangest place Ban had ever encountered. Outside of the white room was a whole other world, a dark world, almost sadistically dark. Masks and whips and chains and handcuffs, and women in black leather frightened him when he peered down the corridor outside the white door, and he retreated back into the purity of the white room almost as quickly as he had left it._

_His own sense of irony assaulted him at that point – he belonged to that dark, cruel world, not this soft white one. This was not a place for murderers._

_Later he ventured out the other white door, the one the woman in white had disappeared through, relieved when it opened into a more normal looking kind of place, neither white nor black, but full of neutrals and pale greens and blues. This was like a house, almost, a home, albeit a large one. The room he found himself in was like a lounge, with sofas and televisions, and beyond it, outside huge, arched windows, there was a wild, unruly kind of garden._

_The woman in white was there, near a bush, into which white blossoms were nestled._

_He slowly approached her._

_"Would you like to know where you are, innocent?"_

_He nodded carefully._

_"This is the House of Lilies. You're welcome here." She dipped her head to the side. "Do you have a name?"_

_His mouth wouldn't work, but she didn't seem to mind._

_"You needn't tell me, if you don't wish to." She smiled, the same sweet smile as before. "Sit with me?" She indicated a white marble bench near the rosebush; he backed away and climbed into a windowsill, forcing his tired limbs to move._

_She laughed, a silvery, tinkling sound, like so many bells. "As you please." Her smile faded, though the gentle light in her eyes remained. _

"_In this world, innocent, there are those who use others for their own benefit. I was one of the victims, long ago. When I finally escaped that life, I found that I was terrified of the world around me." She looked away, as if viewing her own memories. "I was ashamed of my life, and what it had been, although by no fault of my own. I felt driven by my fate into darkness and shame, and thought I should never escape the prison of my own guilt and helplessness._

"_A very wise person was able to teach me to let go of my shame, and my fear. Now I try to teach others like me to do the same."_

_Ban shook his head, and looked back in the direction of the black corridor and its hateful accoutrements. _

_Her eyes were soft. "In my case, innocent, I was used for sex. The women you saw out there were used in a similar fashion. Most of them are terrified of genuine intimacy, now, physical or emotional. In this place, they are always in control. Eventually, they will learn to steer their own courses, and they will leave this place for better lives. Someday they will be strong enough to relinquish their control. But for now, they need to feel empowered._

"_You, I think, have also been misused, differently, perhaps, but misused nonetheless."_

_He scowled and turned away, surprised at the hurt her words evoked. Yamato hadn't used him. He'd needed him._

_A wrench of pain, of guilt. Raw, raw, hadn't he smothered all of this? That empty feeling, where was it? He reached for it, desperately seeking the cool black indifference that guarded his soul from the reality of his guilt._

"_No? Well, perhaps not." Something of his struggle must have shown in his face, because she was watching him with compassion. "Heartache is nothing to be ashamed of, innocent. Sometimes the capacity to suffer is all that keeps us human."_

_She rose. "I have others to attend, now, but you're welcome to remain here awhile, and the white room is yours for so long as you desire it." _

_He started as she left, unwilling to speak yet, but she didn't need the question._

"_My name is Midei."_

_He frowned; Midei was a surname._

"_Just Midei, innocent." Her tinkling laughter followed her through the garden, into some unseen door beyond the wild growth that clambered over the trellised roof._

_Over the next few weeks, he explored the House of Lilies. Mostly he kept to the neutral colored rooms and garden, reluctant to intrude on the darker side of the mansion. He found Midei beside him in the white bed a number of times and soon came to expect and to appreciate her sensitivity; nightmares never seemed to trouble him as badly when she was there. The few times she hadn't been near, his terrors were almost unbearable. She always came, though, somehow instinctively knowing her presence was required. They spent a number of hours together in the garden, often passed in silence, though occasionally she offered her rare, beautiful insights into the world. These he stored up in his consciousness like a balm for his wounded soul, because he understood them and he almost believed them, and because if he could understand them and appreciate them, there must be something in his sullied heart that was still worthwhile._

_It was a cool autumn morning when he finally spoke to Midei for the first time. She hadn't come into the white room for several days, and he'd awakened to a terrible, terrible vision of himself destroying Himiko, just as he had her brother._

_And Midei didn't come._

_He cried – he couldn't remember the last time he'd cried. He cried for Himiko, and for Yamato, and he cried for his own broken soul._

_And he cried because Midei hadn't come to rescue him from his terrors._

_He opened the door to escape into Midei's garden, sickened with the pure white room._

_There she was, tall and fragile, with tears streaming down her face, compassion and pride vying for control of her delicate features._

_Tears welled in his own eyes, angry tears; he blinked them away. "You didn't come," he ground out, voice gravelly from weeks of disuse._

"_I've been here all along, innocent." A white hand brushed at the tear that slipped down. "But you didn't need me. You survived on your own, this time. You'll do it again."_

_He pulled away. "I'm not 'innocent,'" he told her, his voice emerging as a raspy hiss. "Stop calling me that!"_

"_You are."_

"_I'm not!" His right fist clenched._

_The horror of his nightmare reared before him, and he fell back, shamed and horrified that he'd been tempted to strike at the one person who seemed to care. But she wouldn't, not if she knew the truth, and, suddenly desperate for punishment, for penance, Ban crumpled to the floor, and the terrible thing spilled out of his lips and into the air between them._

"_I killed him," he said, gasping for breath against the weight on his breast. "I killed Yamato…"_

_He look up, terrified of the rejection he knew he would find in her eyes._

_But it wasn't there._

"_Oh, innocent." She'd dropped to her knees beside him; she pulled him into her arms, and everything came tumbling out, Asclepius and his grandmother and the Jagan, his mother and Yamato and every terrible shameful thing he was, and still she didn't release him._

"_I'm so sorry, Midou Ban-sama," she said quietly, when his tears were silent streams of water down his cheeks, and no longer the racking sobs that had twisted him in her white arms. "It seems you've been given the powers of gods, but not the wisdom of gods to use them. What a dreadful curse, such terrible responsibility."_

_She tightened her arms about him. "But you were kind to Yamato, and to his sister. You can only do what you see is right, Midou Ban-sama. That is all anyone can expect of you – it is all you can ask of yourself. But that in itself is a great responsibility – to be knowledgeable and discerning enough to know what the right thing is. You won't, always. And that is when you must be humble enough to trust the judgment of others."_

Ginji had finally come looking for him. It was stupid, really, how the idiot could get lost in the supermarket, but always know exactly where to find his partner. Particularly when Ban didn't especially want to be found.

Somehow or other he'd ended up with his back against the brick wall in an alleyway, knees spread open and drawn up toward his chest. Ginji had seated himself beside his partner, waiting for him to rise out of his memories.

"I got plane tickets to Dusseldorf," Ginji commented, not looking at Ban, but rather industriously studying the graffiti on the opposing wall.

"Where'd you get the cash?" Ban didn't look at Ginji either.

Ginji shrugged, smiling sheepishly. "I'm not going to tell you."

Too tired, too confused, too upset to argue, "Whatever makes you happy."

"We should go, Ban-chan." Ginji started to get to his feet.

"Ginji."

Ginji stilled at the serious tone in his partner's voice.

"She could be mine, you know." He wanted to swallow down the lump in his throat, but Ginji would recognize the pain there.

"I know, Ban-chan," Ginji answered quietly.

"What if she is?" He was trying to keep a lid on his desperation, so as not to scare Ginji, but he was uncomfortably aware that Ginji had probably already picked up on it.

"Then we'll be the best parents ever," Ginji answered immediately. "If you hadn't noticed, we're pretty remarkable people, Ban-chan." The joke fell flat.

"This isn't funny, Ginji!" Frustration and grief threatened to boil over.

Ginji leaned in to look more intently into Ban's eyes. Ban backed away, suddenly uncertain. "No, I know it isn't, Ban-chan. But you've done things no normal human being should ever be asked to do. Taking care of a kid – that isn't something you can't do."

Ban growled, feeling some of the steam dissipate. "I don't know anything about kids."

"You're smart, Ban-chan. You'll learn." Ginji grinned suddenly, exuding an infectious confidence. "Trust me."

Ban's head snapped up, and he looked at his partner strangely for a moment. Then he nodded, got to his feet, and reached down a hand to haul Ginji up beside him.

"You've never been on a plane, have you, Ginji?" A twitch attacked the corner of his mouth; he permitted it to spread into an ironic smile. "I should probably give you the window seat."

Ginji's face lit up.

"But I won't." And with that, Ban sauntered off into the night, tuning out Ginji's protests, still a little on edge, still grieving, but willing to trust Midei's advice, and the one person he could always count on to know the right thing to do.


	5. Rescue Me

Not my world; just my playground.

**RESCUE ME**

Ginji listened silently as Ban told him about the woman who'd taken him in after Yamato's death, straining to catch all of the minute details that Ban wouldn't speak aloud. His clipped tones concealed a profound anger, an abiding anger which had never been completely assuaged. The tenseness about his eyes cut little slits of shadow between his brows, warning Ginji not to probe too deeply into the things he wouldn't say; his whole manner was that of a wounded animal, cagey, alert, prepared to strike at the least provocation.

But they had been partners long enough that Ban didn't need to tell him everything about Midei or the House of Lilies. As a zealot loves their cause, a fanatic their god, Ban had loved his savior, perhaps loved her still, and somewhere in the recesses of his brain continued to cherish and worship her memory.

And revile, despise, and loathe the creature that had destroyed her.

Taking what he could from what Ban offered and omitted, and from the thousand little quirks that gave away the rest, Ginji tried to picture the woman whose kindness had saved Ban's soul from the despair that followed Yamato. He saw only the stereotypical angel from the Christian church windows, white and blonde and shining with an ethereal beauty.

An ugly tone began to color Ban's voice as he described her murderer; Ginji forced himself not to reach out to the hand that twitched with rage on the seat beside him, and instead forced himself to pay attention. The flesh-trader Rosenthal, responsible for Midei's murder so many years ago, now counted another person from Ban's past among his victims, a young woman by the name of Lia Sorenson.

Still feeling out the truth, filling out the story around Ban's few, curt sentences, Ginji, with his usual empathy, tried to see the painful memories Ban was reluctantly dredging up, tried to view them from Ban's eyes, from the young lady's eyes.

He found that he had more luck picturing them from Midei's perspective, and though he found his apparent sympathy with the angelic woman from Ban's past curious, he didn't question it.

_A flash of shining black leather and pale skin disappeared behind a thick velvet curtain. Midei almost never came to this part of the house; she'd conquered her demons long ago, and this corridor in the House belonged to the victims._

_One of whom was currently hiding behind that weighty crimson curtain._

_Midei pulled it back with a heavy heart._

_"He wanted it, Midei-sama." The words tumbled out so quickly that Midei was certain the girl knew the untruth of her assertion._

_"You broke his arm, Lia. Pain is only acceptable when it is desired, innocent. You go too far."_

_"What I did was nothing. I've been –"_

_"Your pain does not sanction your brutality." Her voice was seldom so sharp, and it stabbed accusingly in her own ears, so she sighed softly and sank down to the cold black wood of the floor, resting her bare back against the beautiful texture of the velvet. "Oh, Lia. I didn't bring you here to teach you cruelty."_

_A stricken look came over the girl's face as she realized she'd disappointed Midei, and she dropped to her knees beside her mentor. _

_"Midei-sama. I'm sorry."_

_A little thrill of satisfaction welled in Midei's soul; she quashed it, unwilling to allow the girl to see how proud she was of her progress. There was still so far to go. But she'd learned to open herself to another, to care about Midei's feelings and opinions, and that was always a good sign. Some of them never did._

_"Don't apologize to me, innocent. I'm not the one you hurt."_

_She dropped her face, concealing a smile behind the curls that fell forward over her cheeks. Lia's sorrowful face had become suddenly irate._

_"You want me to apologize to that pig?" the girl demanded._

_"That person is here because he feels as though he is less than a person in his own home. Are you, who know so well the dehumanizing pain of subjection and powerlessness, willing to inflict that pain on another?"_

_The sour twist on the girl's mouth remained fixed, but something in her eyes softened. Midei's heart sang. This one was going to be okay. There was compassion for strangers there, there was a willingness to move beyond the old hurts. This one, this precious child, was going to be okay. Time would heal her wounds, and given the proper direction and motivation, she would be just fine._

_"Too late now. That guy's already gone home." A cynical voice sounded from just down the corridor, near the door to the white room. It was a boy's voice, just on the verge of manhood, a sweet baritone that broke every so often into a shrill squeak. _

_Midei sighed inwardly. He could be so wonderfully adorable, and his tragic past stirred sadness and anger and compassion within Midei as few others had. _

_But he could also be such a shameless little smart-ass._

_"You little brat, what do you know?" Lia shouted back, fists clenched. "Like you know anything at all about what happens here! Go back to your pretty white room and your innocent little nightmares and stay out of here!"_

_He'd begun to flush furiously, and Midei felt her nerves twist up. Lia had really pushed a button, mentioning Ban's nightmares. He remained ashamed of them; though he'd long since grown past needing her constant presence to fend them off, he still woke with screams and tears once or twice a week, and most of the women in the House of Lilies knew about Ban's bad dreams. _

_Midei watched sadly._

_"My nightmares? At least I don't call for Mommy!" he spat._

_Something horrible flashed in Lia's eyes. "Only because your mother –"_

_"Enough, innocents." Her plea elicited a chagrined glance from both children, although it was followed by an exchange of murderous looks at each other._

_"There is suffering enough in the world without your cruel remarks adding to it."_

_Ban cast another ugly glare at Lia, who returned it, then looked guiltily at Midei before retreating back into his room. Lia harrumphed and stalked away._

_Midei shook her head, alone with the velvet curtain. "I was never so young," she remarked quietly to herself, and with a small laugh, she pushed herself off the floor, hoping to catch the gentleman Lia had attended too roughly._

An odd fear slipped in and out of Ban's voice, and Ginji didn't quite understand it. He knew that Ban had once had sexual relations with Lia, knew that he was worried about the little girl Emily had talked about in her videos and e-mails. He'd seen the picture – they didn't look very much alike, but there was something about Hitomi's blue eyes that reminded him sharply of Ban, and he felt that he would be less surprised to discover that the girl wasn't Ban's daughter than that she was.

He thought it was wonderful, a little Ban-chan. Intimidating, maybe, that there would be one more person to look out for, to take care of, to feed, but kind of exciting, too. Would she be like Ban, cynical and mercurial and entirely too wise for her age, or would she be an ordinary child? Would she like eel, like her father? Or would she have a sweet tooth and prefer ice cream and candy?

Either way, he reminded himself firmly, before he got too excited, she would be mourning her mother, and could not be expected to act like herself for a long time yet. Healing was a long, slow process, and Ginji knew that better than anyone.

After Ban had finished filling Ginji in on the important points about Rosenthal, Midei, and Lia, Ginji ventured a single question, one that had been burning in his brain.

"Why then, Ban-chan?" Ban didn't answer, just pursed his lips a little, so Ginji tried again. "Why after Midei died?"

Ban looked across the people sitting to his left and out their window – after a quick mock fight he'd given Ginji the window seat after all – and drew a deep breath. "Because neither one of us had the right words to say."

"I'm sorry, Ban-chan," Ginji said sincerely, after a moment. "It sounds like Midei-sama was a unique sort of person."

A curious smile twitched at Ban's mouth, and he shrugged with affected carelessness. "Not really. I know someone who reminds me a lot of her." He leaned his head back and closed his eyes. "Sometimes reminds me of Lia, too." But Ban refused to identify that person, no matter how many puppy dog eye attacks Ginji launched at him.

* * *

The hair on the back of Emily's neck rose, alerting her to the approaching presence. She rocked back on her heels, ready to spring into action if need be, but remaining close to the floor to look as harmless as possible.

"I to come for the brat," said a raspy Germanic voice in English, as a tall, heavyset man in blue pressed his face closely toward the cage that imprisoned Emily and her charge. "You are to me her give."

"I can't decide whether your English or your breath stinks worse," Emily noted with a grimace. Feeling behind her with her mind, she touched the dull, motionless awareness behind her that was Hitomi.

A gun barrel pushed through the bars, along with a muttered German oath. "You have to stay alive, bitch, but nobody said anything about keeping you fucking intact."

"Oh, good, you can speak one language fluently. Coarsely, perhaps, but fluently. You really shouldn't use such language around children, you know. It's bad for them." Striving to keep a brisk, even British accent to color her flawless German phrasing, she tilted her head slightly to one side. "Not that you would know anything about children. I mean, let's be honest, shall we? What woman would consent to bear a child for an ugly creature such as yourself?"

His finger trembled on the trigger as he took aim, and she held her breath. Reaching out for the barrel of the gun, she applied all the force of her mind into the black hole at its end.

All her concentration was shattered, however, when the lifeless form behind her suddenly erupted in a burst of violent activity. A blur of white cotton streaked across her line of sight, and suddenly, the big man was sitting flat on his butt, staring with shock at his gun, whose barrel had been bent back over the stock to face him.

"You're not taking me anywhere." Hitomi stood at the bars, glowering coldly at the downed German. "And you're not going to hurt Miss Emily, either."

"Hitomi…" Emily swallowed hard to mask her surprise.

"Well, he's not," Hitomi replied coolly, blue eyes fixed on the German. All traces of her former lethargy had vanished. Her right hand gripped one of the bars of the cage. All the muscle in her thin little arm tensed, and the bar snapped in half.

She slipped through the two bars beside the one she had broken and advanced on her target. "No," he yelped, frantically waving his arms. "No, you little bitch, no!" He snatched for the pistol inside his vest; Emily plugged the barrel with her mind as he fired it directly into Hitomi's face.

A shriek of pain echoed through the dark basement as the barrel exploded in his hand. Hitomi's tiny right fist connected with his jaw, and the scream cut off abruptly.

"It would have been nice to know you could do that all along, dearest," Emily remarked dryly.

"I didn't feel like doing it before." Hitomi's little shoulders bunched up in a slight shrug. "I feel a little better now." Like lightning, her right hand snaked out to grab one of the bars she'd slipped between, and it snapped like a dry twig in her hand. Emily stepped out of the cage.

Hitomi stood beside Emily and rested her head on the side of her thigh. "Are you okay, Miss Emily? My mom would be ashamed of me if I let something bad happen to you."

Emily knelt beside the girl and enfolded her in a tight embrace, relieved to find that her invisible cloak of thorns had evaporated with her anger. "Your mother would be very proud of you right now, Hitomi-chan," Emily assured her.

"There's more of them out there," Hitomi said quietly. "Outside the door."

"Yes," Emily agreed, still holding the child in her arms tightly. "But I'm not especially worried about them. Every single one of them is a two-bit lackey, not a real Settler in the bunch. Only pure chance sent that cloud of sleeping gas in our direction, or they would never have caught us to begin with."

Hitomi nodded her agreement into the hollow of Emily's shoulder, and pressed herself closely to her Keeper, silently asking to be picked up. Emily obliged, and sent a probing thought out the doors. Already masses of energy approached the door, alerted to their escape by the crunching of metal and the explosion of the big German's gun. The steel door swung wide, and a terrible clanging sounded as it hit the metal of the wall behind it.

One of their captors fell in, gun leveled directly at the child in Emily's arms. She sent her mind out toward it, gripped it tightly, and flung it across the room along with its owner, who, flabbergasted, nonetheless refused to relinquish his pistol. He hit the wall with a sickening crunch, and did not move as his weapon skidded harmlessly toward the vacated cage.

Another man rushed through the door. Unfortunately for him, Emily had been contemplating her surroundings for quite some time, waiting for Hitomi to rouse herself from her grief-induced stupor. Thus she had the hands of her mind wrapped around the heavy metal door even before his graceless stumble through the doorway, and with a grunt of effort, she wrenched the steel from its hinges and broadsided the would-be attacker with it. Pleased with the result, she hefted the door again and repeated the motion against the two hapless hirelings that next ventured into the basement.

Above her, scampering nimbly about the catwalk, two more men attempted to take their aim at her; she hurled the door at the narrow braces that supported the catwalk. Before either could get a shot off, the screech of twisting, breaking metal assaulted her ears, and as the walkway began to buckle in upon itself, they plummeted helplessly to the cold concrete below.

A sudden movement on the edge of her consciousness startled her, almost frightened her, until she recognized the characteristic calm that so queerly accompanied the urgent motion. When yet another flunky braved the danger that was the doorway, she didn't even bother with a weapon. She picked him up bodily and flung him down near the first man she'd knocked unconscious, no longer interested in the battle.

A rush of wind blew through her hair, whipped Hitomi's long golden locks over her shoulder. The little girl shifted in her arms, curious.

A quirk of a smile twitched at the corner of her beloved's mouth, and he settled his long, lean frame against the twisted metal of the doorway, arms crossed over his broad chest. He tilted his head back in a silent, suppressed laugh; his glasses glinted brightly in the dark room. "And here I thought you needed help."


	6. Confronting the Past

Not my world, just my playground.

**Confronting the Past**

_Ban sat on the edge of the bed, staring at nothing in particular, vaguely aware of Lia beside him. Midei was gone, the police were gone, most of the ladies of the House of Lilies had vanished into their private chambers, alone for this one night._

_Gone. Midei had wrapped around him like a shroud of cool peace, pulling the fever of shame from his mind and soul. To be near her was to hold yourself apart from your guilt and your sins, at first because she shielded you from them, and later because she taught you to confront them for the lie or the truth that they really were. She had slowly retreated from him, allowing him to erect his own boundaries, teaching him to stand against the past and face it with regret rather than defeat. Not that crushing, soul-warping shame._

_And now she was gone, and the protection her endless compassion had afforded him was gone with her. He was alone to face Yamato's ghost and the echoes of Himiko's screams. For all their differences, he knew Lia felt the same._

_She sat quietly beside him, and he knew her thoughts were running along the same lines as his own. A few isolated tears struggled down her cheeks, but she wasn't the type to cry. No more than was he. Both had learned long ago that tears don't bring back the dead, and regrets serve no real purpose except to remind you who you are, and from where you've come._

_Lia shuddered and drew a ragged breath. The shudder ran through her fingers, which lay cold and limp in Ban's hand. He squeezed them gently, and she looked down at their entwined hands. He squeezed her hand again._

_Shifting a little, so that she could face him, she sought his eyes, and when she found them, she probed them, looking for he didn't know what. Maybe she didn't know either. He hadn't shed any tears, yet, but her frank, searching gaze, so like Midei's, threatened to make them come._

_She tugged on his hand, pulling him toward her. Guiding his head to her shoulder, she enfolded his own shoulders in a firm embrace and rested her cheek on his head. Choking down the lump in his throat, he wrapped his arms around her narrow waist, vaguely surprised at how small and lean the tough, hard young dominatrix seemed to be. He couldn't have said how long he stayed like that, resting in her arms, clinging to her. The ignominy of the position didn't matter to him; she'd assumed the dominant stance in the embrace, and he was too weary and grief-stricken to fight with her. The few years' seniority she held over him seemed to excuse the role-reversal; he barely acknowledged it._

_After some indeterminate time had passed, he felt her hands trace small, comforting circles between his shoulder blades. He returned the gesture, making circles of his own at the small of her back. They continued the rhythmic motions for a time, and then one of her hands slid down his shoulder to loose the buttons on his white shirt, one given him by Midei. He knew what she wanted and caressed the side of her hip as he brought his own hand round to her flat middle, to fumble with the eye-and-hook and the zipper of her leather pants._

_Nimble fingers flew through the buttons of his shirt with terrible, quickening urgency. He didn't really know what he was doing, so he left off trying to unfasten her clothes. Soon neither had their shirts on; he noted the peculiar juxtaposition of her white lace bra against her black leather, partially undone pants. Something soft and feminine remained in her, despite her profession._

_She laid him down, hovering just above him, propped up on an elbow, silent and purposeful. He almost winced as her long-fingered, cold, bony hand came to rest on his belly, just below his navel, where it remained until the coolness had faded. When it did, she raised her hand to run the tips of her nails lightly from the top of his sternum down to the button of his black slacks. With the same, practiced ease with which she had divested him of his shirt, she had soon slipped his pants off as well. Hers followed his onto the floor, revealing white satin panties._

_She rolled over on top of him, nothing but his thin purple boxers and her white bra and panties between them, and dropped a firm, cold-lipped kiss to his collarbone._

_"You can always say 'stop,' Ban," she told him, before taking the flesh of his neck between her even white teeth._

_But he didn't. He felt alone and empty, like she did, and would have done anything, anything, to fill the void._

Ban came awake on the plane with a shudder.

"Ban-chan?" Ginji was watching him, a worried pinch between his brows.

Ban shook his head, trying to shake away the memory. "Sorry, Ginji. Just dreaming."

"Well, we're almost there."

Ban grunted noncommittally and slumped into the chair. Flying coach wasn't as bad as people made it out to be.

"Ban-chan? How are we going to find Paul and Emily when we get there?"

Ban looked at the ceiling. "I know a lot about Eburhard Rosenthal's Germanic operations, and there was a lot more in Paul's files. There are only a few places the bastard could really have stashed Emily and the kid."

That he knew Rosenthal had captured Emily and the little girl was purely due to Ginji's surprising foresight. After Ban had left the Honky Tonk, Ginji had e-mailed Makubex and asked for someone to meet him at the western-most entrance, to take the password protected hard drives to the young king of Lower Town. Within an hour, Makubex had cracked into them both, and had broken into Paul's e-mail account besides. A quick search of the e-mails revealed a terse note from none other than the filthy flesh-trader himself, warning Paul that he was holding both Emily and Hitomi – 'Lia's pretty little brat' – prisoner. The two hard drives contained a vast amount of information on a number of Paul's old enemies and contacts. One of the largest folders concerned Rosenthal.

For the first couple of hours on the airplane, Ban had pored over Rosenthal's files, eating up anything and everything he could about the bastard. Some of it he already knew, but Paul's knowledge of the criminal far out-stripped his own. Ginji, again with uncharacteristic prudence, had picked up a map of Germany from a local bookstore's travel section; Ban went over it, marking the location of all Rosenthal's known property. After several hours, he fell asleep, and now, they were nearing Berlin.

"You never talk much about Germany," Ginji noted, looking out at the clouds around him. It was going to storm, Ban was sure. Landing was going to be a hassle.

"Nothing much to talk about, Ginji." That wasn't true; Germany had left indelible imprints on Ban's soul, most of them scars.

"That's not true, Ban-chan," Ginji said in a hurt voice. "If you don't want to talk about it, you don't have to, but don't lie to me."

Ban shook his head with a sigh. An unwilling smile came to his lips. "You're right. Sorry." He looked out into the clouds himself, leaning over his partner.

"Germany doesn't have a lot of good memories for me, Ginji. When I was little, witch-hunters seemed to be everywhere, and my grandmother wasn't exactly the sweetest old biddy in the world, you know. Then later," he shoved away the memory of Midei's pale face with its wide eyes, frozen in death, "I just wanted to get Rosenthal. I didn't, but I got hurt pretty badly trying. Rosenthal found out I was der Kaiser's son, and took particular pleasure in hurting me. Evidently there's no love lost between him and my old man. I never really found out why."

"Maybe we'll find out why, now," Ginji said sympathetically. The question about how exactly Rosenthal had hurt Ban flashed in Ginji's brown eyes, but he kept it to himself. Ban didn't volunteer the information.

"Maybe. Or maybe Paul will do what he always does and clam up about everything important." Ban snorted.

Ginji grinned. "That's Paul, alright."

The announcement that the plane would be landing soon came on over the speaker system. Ginji buckled his seat-belt, as instructed. Ban rolled his eyes and didn't bother with his as they made the descent to the runway of Berlin's international airport.

* * *

"Paul, didn't I tell you not to come?" Emily hoisted Hitomi up in her arms, and the little girl snuggled into the warm embrace.

"I received conflicting orders from someone threatening to kill you." Paul raised a brow at her from across the room, daring her to argue the point. She didn't.

"Ah. Can we please get out of here? I don't especially feel like playing with Rosenthal just now."

"Are you hurt? Either of you?"

Emily shook her head, brushing Hitomi's golden brown hair out of her face. "Not at all, darling. A little shaken, perhaps."

"In that case," Paul began, striding over to his wife and the child in her arms, "let's go." Folding them both in his long arms, he summoned a gust of wind to propel them back the way he had come, back to the hotel.

When he arrived, he noted with satisfaction that the coffee hadn't even finished perking.

Emily smiled cheerfully as she recognized the scent wafting through the room. "Cinnamon, Paul? You must have been awfully confident that you would find and rescue us quickly."

Paul shrugged. "Unless you had been seriously injured, I had good reason to trust to having a competent partner to help me. And I doubted Rosenthal would have been so bold as to hurt you before getting what he wanted."

"Sound," Emily agreed. "We haven't eaten in almost a day, Paul; is there anything besides coffee around here?"

He ought to have thought of that, but he hadn't. "No, but I'll order a pizza, if that sounds alright."

Hitomi winced a little, but didn't say anything. "Not a pizza fan, huh?" he asked seriously, hiding a smile

She shook her head, golden hair flying outward. "Nuh-uh."

"Peanut butter and jelly?" A slow smile spread over her face. Paul struggled to conceal his own.

"Okay, PB and J it is." She giggled, and he wondered if she'd never heard it called that before. "I'll be back in a few minutes; there's a grocery store just on the corner."

"Paul." He turned to his wife and was surprised to find a pair of slim arms thrown about his neck. "Be careful, love. Just because we got away easily this time doesn't mean the danger is any less real." He looked at her expressionlessly for a minute, until she blushed. "But you knew that already. Sorry, love. Hurry back; I've missed you."

He planted a quick kiss on her cheek, wishing he could linger over the smooth skin, but forced himself to pull away. With a parting embrace, he dropped from the window onto the street below, and sped off into the night.

Until his return to Infinite Castle, it had been years since he'd last cut loose like this, racing with the wind at his back. He'd never realized how much he missed it, and promised himself to indulge this particular facet of himself more often. Recalling how sore he had been after that last excursion, and dreading the consequences of tonight's adventure, he scolded himself for being out of condition. Thirty-five was hardly middle-aged; he had no call to be so out of shape.

Besides, embracing his trim little bride's waist had reminded him rather uncomfortably that his own middle was a good deal softer than it had once been.

He collected the requisite items, paid for them, calling on a half-remembered command of the language. Belatedly he realized that he probably should have let Emily deal with the shopping. At any rate, he made it back to the hotel in short order, bread, peanut spread, grape jelly, and eating utensils in tow. It looked like rain.

When he arrived, he heard the sound of water running in the bathroom. Emily's head popped out from behind the bathroom door, a towel wrapped turban-style around her hair. "We'll be out in just a minute, darling. Cut mine in triangles, won't you?"

He laughed to himself, digging up a plastic knife from the shopping bag. He started on the sandwiches, leaving Hitomi's and his own intact and slicing hers twice diagonally, making four, perfect little triangles.

When he and der Kaiser had first met Emily, she almost inevitably refused to eat sandwiches. They called up old memories better forgotten, until Paul had ingeniously thought of cutting them up in unusual ways. After that, she insisted that Paul make her sandwiches.

"Hitomi-chan," he called. "How do you like yours cut?"

"Don't cut it!" She scrambled out of the bathroom, enveloped in a big white towel, dripping wet. "Please don't cut it!"

Emily followed after her, also wrapped in nothing but a towel. "You couldn't wait until we got some clothes on?"

"Didn't have anything clean, anyway," Hitomi retorted, hopping up onto the desk where Paul had been making sandwiches.

"You don't like it cut?" Paul handed her a paper plate.

"Nuh-uh, I eat around the crust, like this." She began to demonstrate, nibbling around the edges of her sandwich. Her towel slipped a little; she shifted a bit, but mostly ignored it.

Paul sighed inwardly, relieved. No one had tried to hurt her, at least, not that way, or she would have been more aware of who saw what. He caught Emily's eye, and she nodded briefly, confirming his conclusion.

"I brought you some clean clothes, Em," he said. "I figured you wouldn't want to return to a Keeper safe-house that Rosenthal had found." Jerking a thumb toward his suitcase, he went on. "I bought a few things for her; I hope I got the right size."

She pushed him back in his chair and seated herself on his lap. "Have I mentioned lately that I love you?"

He grinned and gave her the diagonally cut sandwich. She ate two triangles of it, watching Hitomi struggle to keep all the jelly between the bread, a curious kind of smile playing on her mouth.

Her feathery brows went up, and she looked at her husband. "When did you find time to shop, Paul?"

"When I realized I needed coffee."

She laughed and bit into another triangle. After she swallowed, "When did you last get any sleep?"

He shrugged, not entirely sure of the answer himself.

"Then that's probably the first thing we ought to worry about. Running is exactly what Rosenthal would expect us to do; sitting tight should throw him for a loop."

Paul wasn't so sure of that. Rosenthal might be a little insane, but stupid he was not. But he agreed with Em's assessment for reasons of his own. Without sleep, neither he nor his wife were going to be any good against Rosenthal's goons, and whether they escaped now or later, they would eventually run into a fight.

His phone jangled loudly in his pocket. Pinching Em's bottom lightly, surreptitiously, to get her to move, he delved for it, not really intending to answer.

Ban's number scrolled across the cover screen. Paul let the ring run its cycle, waited for the voicemail alert, and checked it.

_Paul, you asshole! Where are you? I am not running all over downtown Berlin looking for you, you son of a bitch, so pick up your damned phone!_

Shit. He really thought he'd had more time than that. With a sigh, he dialed the cantankerous Get Backer's number.

* * *

When Ginji and Ban arrived at Paul's hotel room, dripping wet, they found that the older man had already procured another room for them. Ginji watched as Ban's eyes sought out the small, golden head that lay buried in a pillow on one of the two full-size beds that occupied the room.

"Hello, Midou Ban-kun," Emily Aster said graciously. Her wet hair had been neatly plaited back, and fell down her lime green baby doll tee in a thick, dark blond braid. She nodded at Ginji, and he smiled faintly at her. "Amano Ginji-kun."

Ban returned the nod with a an abrupt jerk of his head, then turned to scowl at Paul. "You know, Natsumi's half out of her mind, worrying about you, old man."

"Natsumi is a good kid," Paul answered calmly. "You two, on the other hand, would have done better to stick to your own business."

"That's not my business?" Ban demanded, pointing an imposing finger at the sleeping little girl. His loud tones caused her to stir, and he dropped his voice into an angry whisper.

"Who the hell says that's not my business?"

"Lia Sorenson did, Ban-kun," Emily answered quietly. He stared at her, suddenly speechless.

She returned Ban's level stare with one of her own. Paul's eyes shifted between the pair of them, and Ginji watched all three.

"What?" Ban finally managed to speak.

"She didn't want you to know."

Ban apparently lost his voice again, because although his mouth opened, nothing came out.

"Why?" Ginji asked for him.

"Because Ban was little more than a child himself, when it happened. And because she didn't want to burden him with the responsibility." Her eyes were open and frank, and Ginji knew without a doubt that whatever else she might be, Emily Aster was no liar.

His heart ached for his partner, but he couldn't really blame Lia-san, or Paul either, for that matter. He didn't know if he would have done the same, but knowing the weight of Ban's existing burdens to be painfully heavy, he could certainly understand Lia's reluctance to add to them.

"So she is mine." He said the words with a ponderous finality. Slowly he made his way to the bed where the little girl slept.

No one said anything at all as Ban dropped to one knee beside her. He studied her intently, careful to conceal his emotions behind a blank mask. But when he reached out to brush imaginary hair out of her face, his hand trembled.

"We should all get some sleep," Ginji said, although it didn't feel like the words were coming out of his mouth. "If this Rosenthal guy is as bad as Ban seems to think he is, I think I'd just as soon be at the top of my game before I run into him."

Paul nodded and tossed Ginji the key to a room just a few doors down. "Don't sleep too heavily," he advised.

Emily was watching Ban. "Ban-kun. Get some rest. She'll still be here in the morning."

Ban's blank eyes met Emily's forthright gaze, but he didn't say anything as he got to his feet. The little girl made a small, cooing sound, and Ban's whole body seem to freeze in place.

"Ban-chan," Ginji called softly, hating himself for pulling Ban away. "Let's go." He jingled the keys and headed for the door.

Ban followed woodenly, and Paul and his pretty wife watched them walk along the tin-roofed, outdoor walkway that connected the second-floor rooms. The glint of Paul's glasses remained at the door; he and Emily didn't take their eyes off of the Get Backers until they were safely in their room.

"Ban-chan," Ginji said quietly, but Ban whirled on him, wide-eyed and near panicked.

"Don't," he said, his tone harsh, on the verge of hysteria. "Just don't."

He flung open the door Ginji had just closed against the storm and the darkness, and stepped back outside. His shaking hands found the metalrailing, and a sudden squeal of twisting metal grated on Ginji's ears as his partner's iron grip warped the bars.

Ginji swallowed back the lump in his throat. "Don't go too far, Ban-chan," he said, and shut the door between them. Sinking against the cold, painted wood, he strained to hear the man he knew was just outside, more to be sure Ban wasn't walking away than to eavesdrop. A heavy thump let him know that Ban had positioned himself the same way Ginji had, bracing his back against the door. Only Ginji was inside, warmed by the unit beside him, and Ban sat out in the wet, thundering night.

"Lia…"

Ginji flinched at the bewilderment, the pain in that single word. Ban always knew what to do. He always knew the right road to take. Always knew the right words to say. He prided himself in his ability to deal with any situation with equanimity and decisiveness.

Ginji had never heard him sound so lost.


	7. It Must Run in the Family

It's been awhile, hasn't it? It didn't get a lot of attention, so I debated whether or not I should continue it. But I really loved Hitomi, and I couldn't stand the thought of abandoning her. So, reviews or no, here it goes.

**It Must Run in the Family**

Ban and Ginji woke early the next morning. When Ginji rapped on Paul's door, however, Emily answered almost immediately, already fully dressed. Even her make-up was in place, and her hair bound up so that it looked deceptively short.

Ban kept a blank expression plastered on his face, and tried not to look at the tiny figure in the bed across the room. He felt Ginji's anxious stare, but ignored it.

"Is she still asleep, Emily-san?" Ginji's voice was so quiet that Ban scarcely heard him.

"She had a long day yesterday."

Gesturing toward the desk near the window, she indicated a very German-style breakfast. Hot, steaming bread and various fruit spreads were laid out on the desk, accompanied by juice and, unsurprisingly, a half-full pot of coffee. Ginji's eyes lit up at the sight, and he dove for the food without another word.

"Ban-kun?" Emily touched his arm lightly.

"I'm not hungry."

"You are," Emily disagreed, her voice very soft, "but it will keep." She pursed her lips, a thoughtful look in her eyes.

"Did you want me to tell her?" she asked gently.

Ban's eyes disobeyed him and stole a glimpse of Hitomi's golden head. No matter how he tried to look away, a hunger within demanded satisfaction, and he found himself searching for Lia, searching for himself, in that small white face. He wasn't certain whether he wanted the answer he was looking for, but it was there. Lia's small, full mouth, and her sweetly heart-shaped face belied the truth, as did his father's eyes, eyes that were less Japanese than German in shape, but nonetheless sharply cornered and deeply set, like his own. "No," he answered finally. "I'll tell her. Just let her sleep for now."

Emily nodded. "Paul and I have been discussing our best options for getting Hitomi out of Germany," she said, changing the subject.

"Rosenthal won't be looking for a single woman with a little girl anymore," Ban commented.

"Well, no, he knows Paul is here. He knows nothing about the two of you, however. We think you should take her back to Japan. Paul and I will deal with Rosenthal."

He managed to tear his eyes away from the girl – from his _daughter_, he reminded himself ruthlessly. A bitter resentment swelled in him against Lia; he tried to quash it and focus on the present. "I have my own scores to settle with that bastard."

"I realize that, Ban-kun, but your revenge is not worth the danger to Hitomi."

"Are you saying I should let the murderer of my child's mother go unpunished?" He bristled. He was spoiling for a fight, and he knew it, but couldn't stop himself.

"Lia died placing the needs of that child above her own. I want Rosenthal taken down as much as you do, but not if it means putting Hitomi in further danger." She crossed her arms, calm and implacable.

"And when she wants to know what happened to the sonovabitch that left her stuck with me?" He glared at her, daring her to challenge him again.

"That he will never harm anyone again. Paul and I will see to that, you have my word."

"He captured you once already."

"He got lucky."

"And if he gets lucky again?"

"He won't."

"You don't know him like I do!" Ban bit his tongue to prevent anymore of that dark memory escaping.

"Oh, I'm afraid you're quite wrong, Ban-kun." Emily's eyebrows rose. "I know Rosenthal much, much more intimately than I care to. As well as Lia ever did. And probably better than you do, come to think of it."

Ban froze, and even Ginji paused mid-chomp.

"Your father and Paul tangled with him once before. It's how I met the first Get Backers; they rescued me from him."

Her voice had become hard, glittering with age-old sufferings and resurfacing hatreds. "I was abandoned at an orphanage in Berlin the day I was born, and just under four years later, I ran away. One of Rosenthal's thugs found me in the streets, and I spent two years with the bastard before Paul and your father found me caged in his townhouse. Aside from stealing his favorite 'toy,' the Get Backers tricked Rosenthal out of billions. They ruined his position as kingpin in Berlin, a position he has had to regain inch by painful inch, for over two decades. He _hates_ the Get Backers.

"Right now, the only connection he knows of between Hitomi and himself is that one of his former 'toys' was her mother, and that another of his 'toys' is her Keeper. I know you've had your own encounters with him – and you're damned lucky he didn't recognize you for der Kaiser's son back then. Can you imagine what he would do to her, if he were to find out who her father is? Who your father was?"

"Damn you." He couldn't look at her, because she was right, and he knew it.

"I'm sorry, Ban-kun. But Hitomi must be taken to Japan, and hidden there. Paul and I can't do it. Rosenthal knows us both; his goons no doubt have our pictures and personal information. You and Ginji are the only ones with a shot at getting her out safely – and the longer we wait, the longer that shot becomes. You look an awful lot like your father, Ban-kun, and Rosenthal has a good reason to remember der Kaiser's face."

"You've made your point, damn you. I'll take her."

Emily nodded in satisfaction. "Good. We'll remain at the airport until you've boarded, to watch your backs."

"Separately, of course," Ban said absently, eyes glued to his sleeping daughter.

"Of course." She frowned. "I should probably dye her hair, and cut it. This may be Germany, but a number of them have seen her, and that honey brown is fairly distinctive."

Ban slid his eyes toward Emily. "No. We'll cover it with a hood, or a wig." The thought of purposefully changing her hair – Lia's golden hair – hurt in places he'd forgotten existed. It would be like denying Lia, somehow, denying that that one night of loneliness and comfort had come to pass. And he couldn't do it.

"I really think – "

"I said to leave it alone!"

A wide-eyed Ginji nudged his side. "Ban-chan," he said, a little timidly, "you woke her up."

His head spun as his eyes flew to the bed, where Hitomi was sitting up, a terrible scowl on her small face.

"Who are you?" she demanded. She tumbled out from beneath the covers, and her tiny feet raced along the carpeted floor to Emily. She glared up at him. "Why are you yelling at Emily-san?"

"Just a disagreement, sweetheart," Emily said, stroking the little girl's hair. "Ban-kun here is a friend of Paul's."

"Oh." The reproachful glare faded away, and her too-familiar blue eyes became filled with curiosity. "I'm Hitomi," she said, by way of introduction.

Ban's tongue felt like sandpaper in his mouth, rough and dry, and not at all an instrument of human speech.

"He's Midou Ban," Ginji answered brightly, dropping down out of his chair to sit cross-legged beside Hitomi. "And I'm Amano Ginji."

She blinked. "You have crumbs on your cheek," she informed him primly. "And jelly on your chin. And in your hair."

"Oops." He swiped at the remains of his breakfast. "Thanks for saying something," he added, with a half-amused look at Ban. She nodded, but said nothing more.

Ban watched the exchange with a sense of bemusement. None of it seemed real.

"You shouldn't yell at people, Midou-san." She was looking at him again.

Ginji and Emily watched him expectantly. Just at that moment, the bathroom door swung open, and Paul emerged, half-dressed. Droplets of moisture still clung to his lean frame, and his strawberry curls were long and heavy with water.

"Already up, are you? I thought for sure you lazy bums would still be asleep." He smiled at them, but his grin slipped away as he realized that Hitomi was also awake.

Emily shot him an irritated frown, and he raised his brows innocently and shrugged, a silent, 'how was I supposed to know?'

"Hitomi," Ban said then, forcing words past his seemingly immobile tongue. "Come sit outside with me for a minute."

She looked at Emily for direction; the petite blonde nodded encouragingly. With a shrug, she stretched her arms up, as if asking to be held.

His heart skipped a beat, but he managed to control the trembling in his right hand as he reached down to take one of her tiny hands in his, opting not to carry her. The snake within purred at the touch, and if he had still harbored any doubts, that would have rid him of them. It recognized his heir, coiling back in rage, spitting dire warnings to unseen enemies as it sensed the danger surrounding her.

She frowned at his touch, and he wondered if she'd felt anything. Holding her hand uneasily, as if it might suddenly burst into flame, he led her to the door and out into the pale grey dawn.

* * *

"I miss her." Hitomi sat with her knees pulled up to her chest beneath the window, and Ban sat beside her, his long limbs unconsciously echoing her pose. She seemed to have taken the news well, but Ban could already see that she'd inherited his useful, if sometimes self-destructive habit of concealing her emotions.

What was he supposed to say to such a thing? Lia may or may not have been a great mother, but she was the only parent Hitomi had ever known. She was the one who watched her first steps, heard her first words, seen her first smile. And Lia was – had been – very intelligent. She'd learned the ropes of motherhood quickly, he felt sure. The scraped knees, the monsters under the bed, she'd have breezed right through them. And she would have known what to say right now.

"As long as you're alive," Ban heard himself saying, "as long as you remember her, there's a part of her still here." Midei had said that about Yamato once, and he repeated the thought to Hitomi almost woodenly, despising himself for not being able to find anything original to cosole her with. Ginji was wrong. He was going to suck at parenthood.

Just like he sucked at comforting hurt people. Ginji knew him well enough to interpret his unspoken reassurances, most of the time, but this golden-haired child wasn't Ginji, wasn't anything like Ginji. She needed support, from him, from her father, not from Emily, or Ginji, or even Paul, any of whom would have been better at this than he was.

"You know what I miss most?" she asked, breaking into his thoughts. She looked into the sky, where the sun struggled to make itself known behind a smoky blanket of clouds. "I miss her hair."

She looked up at him, waiting for an answer. There was a shine in her eyes, but no tears fell.

He couldn't stand it, that sorrow trying to express itself, being forced back by someone so young. Closing his own eyes, he dropped his head back against the wall. "It was a lot like yours."

A rustle of clothes told him that she was shaking her head. "No. Mom's always smelled like lavender. And vanilla. And she never put it up, like Emily-san does. She always left it long."

She'd worn it up often in the House of Lilies. But Midei never had.

"She used to," Ban answered carefully. "But a friend of ours always left her hair down. Probably your mom was thinking of her."

"I think I won't put mine up, either." The sentence wasn't quite a question, but it was obvious she expected a response of some kind.

"That's one way to remember her."

He cracked an eye open, and was surprised to see Hitomi looking at him. "How are you going to remember her?"

They stared at one another for awhile, and while they sat there, the rain began to fall again, drowning out the fragile sunlight. A cold wind crept up on them, and sent a shiver down Ban's back.

"I'm going to look at you," he said finally. "That's how I'm going to remember Lia."

Much to his surprise, that seemed to be the right thing to say, because the little girl moved closer to him. "Then you probably shouldn't let Emily-san cut my hair, like she was talking about last night."

"No. No one's going to cut your hair."

She wormed her way under his arm and was quiet for a long moment. Her small body felt peculiarly comfortable, nestled against his side. He leaned back against the wall, watching the rain.

"Your eyes look like mom's sad eyes." Vividly blue eyes searched his face, again looking for a response.

He almost snorted – him, sad? But she was a warm, soft, vulnerable presence, and he bit down a reflexive urge to defend himself against accusations of humanity. "Your mom saw a lot of life that no one should ever have to see," he said instead.

She nodded, her head resting against his ribs, and he wondered how much of Lia's past was known to her daughter.

"Have you?"

Ban's hands strayed to the little girl's upper arm and shoulder, and he rubbed them both with long, firm strokes. "Yes."

"I'm sorry." Her voice finally cracked. Looking down, he saw a long, wet trail of a tear sparkling in the weak light. She saw him look, and buried her face in his side, wrapping her arms around as much of his waist as they would encircle. "I'm sorry."

He let her cry, while he panicked over what exactly he ought to be doing. He knew, better than anyone, words were often hollow, without a genuine feeling or insight behind them. Midei would have known what to say, what to do to comfort her. Hell, Ginji would have known.

But she was crying for him, and maybe for Lia, and not because she was lonely or grieving. She was holding him so tightly, as if trying to protect him from whatever her youthful imagination could paint as things 'no one should ever have to see.' It was something Ginji might have done.

Ginji… Ginji was an awful lot like a big kid, sometimes. Maybe he could get away with treating her like a little Ginji.

He smiled, resting a hand on her golden head. "Silly. Like I need a little kid crying over me."

She sniffled and turned her face up to look at him, blinking away tears. "He isn't going to get away with it, is he?"

Involuntarily his arms tightened around her tiny body. "No."

Sniffling again, she relaxed her hold on him, though she stayed nestled deeply into his side. "Good."

"Ginji – my friend with the food on his face – and I are going to take you back to Japan with us. Emily and Paul are going to deal with Rosenthal." He hated himself for saying that, because he should have been the one to take Rosenthal out, but he saw no way out of his current predicament. Hitomi had to come first.

"I don't want to go to Japan," she answered softly. "I want to see that guy get what he deserves."

"Me too, kid. It's just not in the cards."

"In the cards?" Through the wet stripes of her tears, she wrinkled her nose a little in confusion.

"Fortune-tellers sometimes read cards to predict the future. So, saying something 'isn't in the cards' means that it isn't going to happen."

"I don't believe in fortune-telling," she told him seriously. He smiled a little at that.

"Me neither."

"So just because it's "not in the cards" doesn't mean it can't happen, right?"

"It's a phrase. Not supposed to be taken literally."

"Mom always said we make our own futures."

_We all make our own futures_. Another of Midei's life-lessons.

"She was right."

"So why do you and I have to leave, again?"

Ban bit the inside of his cheek. The little girl was making it harder and harder for him to be content with Emily's plan. With a sudden flash of insight, he stared down at her.

"That's not going to work, kid," he said, surprising himself with the sternness in his tone. "You can't manipulate me into letting you stay. It's too dangerous. I think you're intelligent enough to know that."

She pulled away, just a little, to look up. Behind the innocent blankness of her stare, he saw wheels turning.

Despite himself, he laughed. "You're really, really good, though. For a kid."

"I don't want to leave. I want Rosenthal." Every trace of sadness was gone from her voice, which had become angry and flat.

"So do I. But that doesn't change the fact that it's dangerous."

She seized his right hand in hers, and began to squeeze. He winced, but although her grip was powerful, his was stronger. He squeezed tightly enough to keep her from breaking his hand, careful not to overdo it.

"I'm not just a helpless little kid, you know. And I wasn't asleep through all of that, either. I know you want Rosenthal. I'll stay out of the way, I promise. I just want to be there."

Ban shook his head, thinking quickly. Hitomi was only four, but she already she had proven more cunning than most adults he knew, and definitely functioning on a much higher level than she ought to be.

Genius must run the in the family, he thought, with a peculiar sense of pride.

"Look, even if you could convince me, kid, Emily would never go for it."

"She isn't my mom," Hitomi said evenly, although he didn't miss the shadow that passed over her eyes. "You're the one who gets to decide."

"She's carrying out your mother's wishes," Ban said weakly. Damn, she was good.

"So what you want doesn't matter at all?" she challenged. "Or what I want?"

"Nope. I've got a responsibility to your mom, just like Emily does, and I've got one to you. And you're too young to get a say-so." Even as he said it, it felt like a cop-out. She was easily the equal of any kid twice or even three times her age. He had been involved in equally dangerous things as a young child.

Of course, he hadn't had a parent to tell him no.

"It's not fair." She released him entirely and wrapped her arms around her legs.

"Don't pout," he warned her, cocking an eyebrow. "I'm on to you, kid. It's not cute when you're being manipulative."

To his surprise, a reluctant smile tugged at her mouth. "You sound like Mom." The smile twisted a little wryly. She blew out a deep breath, and the whole of her body seemed to relax. "I may not get a choice, but I don't have to like it," she remarked. Evidently that thought was somehow comforting.

"No," he agreed. "You don't have to like it."

"Don't tell everyone else that the cute thing's a sham, okay? I'm not even three feet tall. Being adorable is about the only way I ever get what I want."

He fought back a smile. "It'll be our little secret," he promised.


End file.
